Fort Bragg is a town in the United States of America, located in the coastal part of Mendocino County in the state of California.
The city is located along State Route 1 and was founded before the American Civil War as a garrison outpost rather than a fortification.
Fort Bragg is today a popular tourist destination thanks to its picturesque landscapes overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the open coast of Northern California.
Its main attraction is Glass beach, one of the strangest beaches in the world, as instead of sand it is made up of thousands of pieces of colored or transparent glass.
But how was something like this possible?
The answer must be sought in the past of this area; in fact you should know that in 1906 a large landfill was opened on this beach, a choice that was very common at the time and practiced by the small communities that lived near the sea.
Over the years, people have obviously thrown everything there, including glass bottles, household appliances and even vehicles, so much so that local residents still call this place “The Dumps”.
The piles of waste were consequently set on fire periodically to try to dispose of their mass.
In 1967 the city administration closed the area and various cleaning programs were conducted over time to solve the problem of environmental pollution.
The biodegradable waste ran its course, while all the others were removed and transported elsewhere or sold, except for the broken glass, which scattered by the sea waves covered the beach like precious stones, as it is still visible today.
The beach has been part of the MacKerricher State Park since 2002 and is visited by many tourists every year, especially in summer, who used to take these pieces of glass home as souvenirs, an activity which is however now prohibited, as the beach was running the risk of losing the very characteristic that distinguished it from the others.
