One Man's Trash is Another Man's Beach - Glass Beach

Credit: FortBragg.com

So you know how when you see broken glass at the beach your first instinct is to jump back 10 feet and rant about what the world is coming to? Well, a different set of rules applies at Glass Beach in MacKerricher State Park near Fort Bragg, California, where the "sand" is largely comprised of broken glass. Visitors come by the droves every year to stroll on the shiny and colorful beach, the broken shards now harmless, polished sea glass.

Once known as "The Dumps," the area was a dumping ground for household garbage in the early 1900s. Eventually the location was closed and efforts were made to clean up the mess. The ocean did its part as well, pounding waves on top of the garbage and refining the shards of broken glass into small, smooth pieces that now cover the entire beach. Collecting the pieces of glass are prohibited, but visitors do it anyway and quantities are diminishing. In fact, there's now a movement to dump new piles of broken glass onto the beach. I'm not sure environmentalists would approve, but it does look awful pretty.