Posts Tagged ‘coast’
Beach Grass
Beach Grass
Who can forget those family trips from the inland to the coast if taken while a child if so fortunate? Not me. A world away from the gray concrete and mercury vapor lights which dominated Seattle and much of the surrounding area where I lived in the 50’s through 60’s, a trip to the flat-surf beaches of Washington State brought nothing short of an exotic change. Although local accommodations were sparse, little one-room cabins once populated the shoreline by the dunes. These were always a joy to spend summer days at.
These little cabins were never really clean by hotel standards, for example, if an oyster shell on a sill or in a shower and a thin film of sand on the floor are things you consider as inappropriate. Oh, but how appropriate! A few of these rough gems still exist from Long Beach at the southern end of the Washington Coast up to the edge of the Olympic National Park to the north. Names such as Grayland, Westport, Ocean Shores, Moclips, and Kalaloch were familiar to me when I was young.
“Beach Grass” was taken in the dunes along the Long Beach peninsula on Washington’s coastline. Roughly 20 miles long, The Long Beach Peninsula touts one of the longest continuous flat-sand beaches in the world. Indeed there is an archway that is inscribed with “The Longest Beach in the World”. This may be debatable, but it would take most people a full two days or longer to walk the length of the Long Beach Peninsula. Miles of soft sand and a couple of rocky headlands can stifle many from undertaking such an endeavor. The native grasses are very wheat-like.
Cascadia Megathrust Earthquake, January 26, 1700
Evidence indicates a mega earthquake occurred off the Pacific Northwest Coast at 9pm on January 26, 1700. Information compiled from analysis of soils in the Pacific Northwest, writings from Japan, and via local storytelling all corroborate to tell of this major earthquake, the result of which produced a Pacific Ocean-wide tsunami. Dubbed the 1700 Cascadia Megathrust Earthquake, this earthquake was estimated to have been a devastating 9.0 if it were to be registered on the current Richter Magnitude Scale.
Pacific Northwest coastal forests and marshlands drowned from the Cascadia Earthquake and were subsequently covered with new sediment over the years since. The most significant clue linking a tsunami in Japan to the earthquake in the Pacific Northwest came from the study of tree rings (dendrochronology) in the cedar trees along the Pacific Northwest coastline. This studiy shows that the cedar trees were killed as a result of lowering of the region’s coastal shelf into the Pacific Ocean tidal zone. Outermost growth rings in these cedar trees were formed in 1699, the last growing season before the tsunami. This year also coincides with the timing of the writings from Japan.
For more information about the potential of future Cascadia megathrust earthquakes visit: Cascade Region Earthquake Workgroup (crew.org)
Sources:
Natural Resources, Canada website
Wikipedia
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1965 Seattle Earthquake
Pacific Northwest | J R Hudson 