Glass Beach is situated near Fort Bragg in California. There are actually 3 Glass Beaches situated near each other but it's the third site which is usually referred to as Glass Beach.
In 1906 a dump was created for Fort Bragg residents to dispose of their waste. By 1943 this site had filled up and a new site was opened which by 1949 was also filled. A third site was then opened which was filled by 1967 and was subsequently closed. Over the following decades the waste was cleared and recycled but the broken glass and pottery that had been dumped there was left behind and became rounded by the action of the sea tumbling it over the pebbles.
Glass Beach has been a tourist attraction for many years and attracts tens of thousands of people each year. Visitors not surprisingly want to take away a souvenir; some take a few glass pebbles but others take bags and buckets of pebbles away with them. This has meant that depth of glass pebbles has reduced from around a foot (30cm) to just a thin layer today. Collecting is banned on the beach but this does not stop peoples collecting.
I've not personally visited the area but I was made aware of its existence whilst searching for music samples. Soundiron is a company producing deep-sampled instrument libraries. They've recorded numerous sounds from Glass Beach which are available as a set of samples for the Kontakt player.
Below is a track created by Soundiron using the Soundiron Glass Beach set:
If you want to visit you should do it sooner rather than later as the pebbles are disappearing fast.
My little blog is now 2 years old!
Catch You Later!
Credits:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Beach_(Fort_Bragg,_California)http://www.zmescience.com/other/glass-beach-10102011/
http://soundiron.com/products/glass-beach
https://soundcloud.com/soundiron/freewayland-soundiron-glass-1
http://beachblissliving.com/best-sea-glass-beaches-america/
