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.
Puget Sound, a sound on the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington, is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins. A part of the Salish Sea, Puget Sound has one major and two minor connections to the open Pacific Ocean via the Strait of Juan de Fuca—Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and Deception Pass and Swinomish Channel being the minor.
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.
Freeland is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) on Whidbey Island in Island County, Washington, United States. At the time of the 2010 census the population was 7,812. 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) in Jefferson County, Washington, United States. The population was 844 at the 2010 census. All Marrowstone addresses are in Nordland, Washington, and the ZIP code for Marrowstone Island is 98358.
A spit or sandspit is a deposition bar or beach landform off coasts or lake shores. It develops in places where re-entrance occurs, such as at a cove's headlands, by the process of longshore drift by longshore currents. The drift occurs due to waves meeting the beach at an oblique angle, moving sediment down the beach in a zigzag pattern. This is complemented by longshore currents, which further transport sediment through the water alongside the beach. These currents are caused by the same waves that cause the drift.
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.
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 is one of five "major hurricanes" to strike New England since 1635. At the time it struck, the Great September Gale was the first hurricane to strike New England in 180 years.
Saratoga Passage lies in Puget Sound between Whidbey Island and Camano Island.
The Puget Sound region is a coastal area of the Pacific Northwest in the U.S. state of Washington, including Puget Sound, the Puget Sound lowlands, and the surrounding region roughly west of the Cascade Range and east of the Olympic Mountains. It is characterized by a complex array of saltwater bays, islands, and peninsulas carved out by prehistoric glaciers.
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:
The Leech River Fault extends across the southern tip of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, creating the distinctively straight, narrow, and steep-sided valley, occupied by Loss Creek and two reservoirs, that runs from Sombrio Point due east to the Leech River, and then turns southeast to run past Victoria. It is a thrust fault that marks the northernmost exposure of the Crescent Terrane, where basalt of the Metchosin Igneous Complex is dragged under Vancouver Island by the subducting Juan de Fuca Plate. About ten kilometers north the nearly parallel San Juan Fault marks the southern limit of rock of the Wrangellia terrane, which underlies most of Vancouver Island. Between these two northeast-dipping thrust faults are the Leech River Complex and the Pandora Peak Unit. These, along with the Pacific Rim Complex further up the coast, are remnants of the Pacific Rim Terrane which was crushed between Wrangellia and Siletzia. The contact between the bottom of Wrangellia and the top of the subducted PRT continues northwest along the coast as the West Coast Fault, and southeast towards Victoria as the Survey Mountain Fault. The Leach River Fault (LRF) extends off-shore towards Cape Flattery, where the Crescent—Pacific Rim contact continues northwest as the Tofino Fault (TF).
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.