Double Bluff Beach | |
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Beach | |
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| Location | Island County, United States |
Double Bluff Beach is a beach and headland on Whidbey Island in the U.S. state of Washington. The beach tidelands themselves comprise Double Bluff State Park. [1] The uplands and access areas are operated by Island County, Washington as Double Bluff County Park and Beach Access. [2]
Double Bluff is an approximately two-mile-long public beach located on southern Whidbey Island along the shores of Admiralty Inlet, north of Puget Sound. The beach access parking lot is roughly two miles from the retail core of Freeland. From the northern portions of the beach, the Olympic Mountains can be seen to the West. The southern portions face to the South, where in the distance one can see the highrises of Seattle roughly 30 miles away, dwarfed over by Mount Rainier which is roughly 100 miles away.
The Southern end of the shore faces South, toward Useless Bay and, further to the South, towards Puget Sound and Seattle. Fed by sand from the bluffs at its East and West ends, Useless Bay has a sandy, shallow slope; the horizontal distance between high and low tidelines can exceed 2500 feet.
Useless Bay opens to the West into Admiralty Inlet. The shore here abuts a large bluff which rises from Useless Bay and descends to Double Bluff several miles down the shore.
The primary character of the shore here is shifting sands eroded from the bluffs with large fields of pebbles, driftwood, slabs of peat, and glacial erratic boulders.
The bluffs at Double Bluff Beach are up to 300 feet high, and erosive processes that have been at work here since the last ice age—from wind, rain, and tides, as well as tectonic action from the South Whidbey Island Fault [3] —have revealed many distinct geologic strata in the exposed bluff face. [4]
The oldest strata come from the Double Bluff Glaciation (150,000 - 200,000 BP), [5] and the youngest—at the very top of the bluffs—is composed of drift from the Possession Glaciation (~70,000 BP). Between these two layers is the Whidbey Formation, an interglacial layer composed of sediments laid down by lakes, streams and rivers within the Puget Sound basin, before it was inundated by the Pacific Ocean. [6] The Whidbey Formation composes the majority of the visible bluff face and consists of poorly sorted silt, clay, and sands, pebbles, and compressed slabs of peat. Mammoth teeth and tusks have been found eroding from the bluff. [7]
Many species of wildlife may be found here including bald eagles, great blue herons, peregrine falcons, osprey, gulls, crows, river otters, several species of sea anemone, many species of crab, snails, sea urchins, and barnacles.
Double Bluff Beach is popular with both locals and tourists because of its large size, easy access, and many activities. Many people build huts with drift wood on the beach. Other activities include:
Deception Pass is a strait separating Whidbey Island from Fidalgo Island, in the northwest part of the U.S. state of Washington. It connects Skagit Bay, part of Puget Sound, with the Strait of Juan de Fuca. A pair of bridges known collectively as Deception Pass Bridge cross Deception Pass. The bridges were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
Located on the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington, Puget Sound is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins. As a part of the Salish Sea the sound has one major and two minor connections to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which in turn connects to the open Pacific Ocean. The major connection is Admiralty Inlet; the minor connections are Deception Pass and the Swinomish Channel.
Whidbey Island is the largest of the islands composing Island County, Washington, in the United States, and the largest island in Washington state. Whidbey is about 30 miles (48 km) north of Seattle, and lies between the Olympic Peninsula and the I-5 corridor of western Washington. The island forms the northern boundary of Puget Sound. It is home to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. The state parks and natural forests are home to numerous old growth trees.
Island County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 86,857. Its county seat is Coupeville, while its largest city is Oak Harbor.
Clinton is a community and census-designated place (CDP) located on southern Whidbey Island in Island County, Washington, United States. The town was named after Clinton, Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the population was 928. However, the post office serves at least 2,500 people.
Freeland is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) on Whidbey Island in Island County, Washington, United States. At the time of the 2020 census the population was 2,252. The town received its name based on its origins as a socialist commune in the early 1900s: in the eyes of its founders, the land of the town was literally to be free for all people. Some of the first settlers were veterans of a prior experiment in socialism, the nearby Equality Colony.
Marrowstone is a census-designated place (CDP) on Marrowstone Island in Jefferson County, Washington, United States. The population was 995 at the 2020 census. All Marrowstone addresses are in Nordland, Washington, and the ZIP code is 98358.
Point Roberts is a pene-exclave of Washington on the southernmost tip of the Tsawwassen peninsula, south of Vancouver, British Columbia. The area, which had a population of 1,191 at the 2020 census, is reached from the rest of the United States by traveling 25 mi (40 km) through Canada, or by boat or private airplane. It is a census-designated place in Whatcom County, Washington, with a post office, and a ZIP Code of 98281. Direct sea and air connections with the rest of the U.S. are available across Boundary Bay.
Admiralty Inlet is a strait in the U.S. state of Washington connecting the eastern end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Puget Sound. It lies between Whidbey Island and the northeastern part of the Olympic Peninsula.
The Admiralty Head Light is a deactivated aid to navigation located on Whidbey Island near Coupeville, Island County, Washington, on the grounds of Fort Casey State Park. The restored lighthouse overlooks Admiralty Inlet. It was the companion to the Point Wilson Light, which sits four miles away on Admiralty Inlet's western shore.
Sucia Island is located 2.5 miles (4.0 km) north of Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands, San Juan County, Washington, United States. It is the largest of an archipelago of ten islands including Sucia Island, Little Sucia, Ewing, Justice, Herndon, the Cluster Islands islets, and several smaller, unnamed islands. The group of islands is about 2.5 miles (4.0 km) in length and just short of a half mile wide. Sucia island is roughly the shape of a hand. The total land area of all islands is 2.74 km2. The main island of Sucia Island by itself is 2.259 km2. There was a permanent population of four persons as of the 2000 census, all on Sucia Island. Sucia Island State Park is a Washington State Marine Park.
The Great September Gale of 1815 was a deadly and fast-moving Category 4 Atlantic hurricane in 1815 that became the second of five known major hurricanes to strike New England. At the time, it was the first hurricane to strike the greater area in 180 years.
Saratoga Passage lies in Puget Sound between Whidbey Island and Camano Island.
South Whidbey State Park is a public recreation area consisting of 381 acres (154 ha) of old-growth forest and tidelands with 4,500 feet (1,400 m) of shoreline on Admiralty Inlet along the west shore of Whidbey Island in Island County, Washington. The state park contains many mature specimens of western red cedar, Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, and western hemlock, some of the largest on Whidbey Island, including a giant cedar over 500 years old.
The Puget Sound faults under the heavily populated Puget Sound region of Washington state form a regional complex of interrelated seismogenic (earthquake-causing) geologic faults. These include the:
Glacial erratic boulders in Island County are a remnant of the Pleistocene glaciation that created Puget Sound and transformed the surfaces of what are now Island County's main landmasses: Whidbey Island and Camano Island. South of Deception Pass, the two islands' surfaces and beaches are completely composed of glacial till. Abundant glacial erratic boulders lie on the islands, their beaches, and under the near-shore waters.
South Puget Sound is the southern reaches of Puget Sound in Southwest Washington, in the United States' Pacific Northwest. It is one of five major basins encompassing the entire Sound, and the shallowest basin, with a mean depth of 37 meters (121 ft). Exact definitions of the region vary: the state's Department of Fish and Wildlife counts all of Puget Sound south of the Tacoma Narrows for fishing regulatory purposes. The same agency counts Mason, Jefferson, Kitsap, Pierce and Thurston Counties for wildlife management. The state's Department of Ecology defines a similar area south of Colvos Passage.
Hills in the Puget Lowland, between the Cascades and the Olympic Mountains, including the entire Seattle metropolitan area, are generally between 350–450 feet (110–140 m) and rarely more than 500 feet (150 m) above sea level. Hills are often notable geologically and for social reasons, such as the seven hills of Seattle.
During the Vashon Glaciation a series of lakes formed along the southern margin of the Cordilleran Ice Cap. In the Puget Sound depression, a series of lakes developed, of which Lake Russell was the largest and the longest lasting. Early Lake Russell’s surface was at 160 ft (49 m) above sea level, draining across the divide at Shelton, Washington into early Glacial Lake Russell. When the ice margin receded northward, the lake expanded. When it reached the Clifton channel outlet, the water levels dropped to 120 ft (37 m) above sea level. The new longer and lower level lake is referred to as Lake Hood. The glacier continued to retreat until the northern outlet of the Hood Canal was reached as the water level equalized with Glacial Lake Russell becoming part of that body of water.
Mutiny Bay is a bay in the U.S. state of Washington. Part of Puget Sound, Mutiny Bay is located in Island County near the southern end of Whidbey Island, northwest of Useless Bay and adjoining Admiralty Inlet.