Goleta Beach facts for kids
Goleta Beach is a beautiful stretch of coastline near Goleta, California. It's located right next to the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) campus. Part of this beach is managed by Santa Barbara County and is known as Goleta Beach County Park (GBCP). The beach itself was partly created by people in 1945 when sand was added to it. It's also a special home for migrating birds like the snowy plover, which is an endangered species. Sometimes, the beach might be closed for a short time when more sand is being added to it.
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What Makes Up Goleta Beach?
The Goleta Slough and Wetlands
The Goleta Slough is a nearby wetland area where fresh water from the land mixes with the ocean's salty water. It's like a natural drain for the Goleta Valley and all the creeks that flow down from the Santa Ynez Mountains. This wetland is a very important ecosystem, but it has been changed by walls and gates that affect how the ocean's tides move in and out.
The Goleta Slough wetlands used to be much bigger, covering about 1,150 acres. Now, they are about 430 acres. Most of this change happened in the early 1940s. A small airport was made much larger to create an airfield for a Marine base during World War II. This base was located where the University of California, Santa Barbara is today. After the war, this airfield became the Santa Barbara Municipal Airport. Groups like the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society care a lot about the plants (flora) and animals (fauna) living in the Goleta Slough. They work to protect this special place.
The Goleta Beach Park
Goleta Beach County Park is a place you can visit during the day, from 8:00 AM until sunset. It has lots of fun things to do! You'll find 27 picnic tables, four horseshoe pits, three restrooms, and a volleyball court. There used to be a cool wind-powered art sculpture called a "Windamajig," but it was damaged by strong winds in 2006 and had to be removed.
The park covers about 29 acres and includes 4,200 feet of beach. There's also a restaurant called the Beachside Restaurant that leases space from the Parks Department. It has a café and a shop where you can buy bait and fishing gear. The pier at Goleta Beach, called More's Landing, was first built in 1874. It was later updated in the late 1920s by the federal Department of Forestry.
This park is very popular with both local people and tourists. About 1.5 million people visit it every year, making it the most visited park in the Santa Barbara County Park system. Many visitors come by car, using Highway 217, and the park has 580 parking spaces.
The Western Point of the Beach
The western end of Goleta Beach has a rocky area where the ocean's tides go in and out. This area is home to many sea creatures. There are also some freshwater seeps and pipes from the UCSB campus that drain into the ocean near this point. A big problem here is that the rocky point and the cliffs above it are eroding, especially during strong El Niño weather events. The way the bay is shaped makes the ocean waves hit this spot with a lot of force. Because of this erosion, the edge of the cliffs has become unstable, so it can be dangerous to walk too close to them.
History of Goleta Beach
For thousands of years, the mouth of the Goleta Slough moved around along the beach. Over time, the land around it slowly rose up. People in Santa Barbara have been changing the Goleta Beach area since the late 1800s. In 1846, cattle grazing on the hillsides caused dirt to wash into the Goleta Slough, filling parts of it. In the early 1900s, local landowners encouraged people to bring dirt to the beach, and a state park was created there.
In 1943, during World War II, the federal government continued filling in the wetland. They bulldozed the historic Mescalitan Island inside the slough to build an airbase. In the 1960s, more construction happened in the wetlands, including a sewage treatment plant and California Highway 217. The state park was then given to Santa Barbara County to manage.
Protecting Goleta Beach from Erosion
One big challenge for Goleta Beach is coastal erosion. This means that sand and dirt are constantly being washed away by the ocean, making the beach narrower. In the last 14 years, the beach has been losing about 20 feet of sand per year. If nothing is done, parts of the park, like the picnic areas, restrooms, parking lots, and even the Beachside Bar Café, could be lost to the ocean.
There are different ideas about how to stop this erosion. Some solutions, often called "hard engineering" solutions, involve building structures to block the waves. However, these structures can sometimes cause more erosion in other places along the coast.
Different Ways to Protect the Coast
People have different ideas about how to save Goleta Beach.
- Building Strong Structures: Some people believe the park must be saved at all costs. They suggest "hard engineering" solutions like building structures to protect the coast.
- A breakwater is a wall built a bit offshore to create a calm area like a harbor. But this might change how sand moves along the coast too much.
- Groynes are like fences made of wood or concrete that stick out into the ocean from the beach. They help sand build up on one side, but they can also stop sand from building up on the other side.
- A seawall is a concrete wall built along the base of cliffs, parallel to the ocean. While it might seem to stop erosion, it can make erosion worse on the sides of the wall.
- A revetment is similar to a seawall but uses large boulders piled up at the base of cliffs. It might not cause as much erosion on the sides, but the area right in front of it can still suffer.
- Letting Nature Take Its Course: Another group believes in "managed retreat." This means removing existing buildings and letting nature reshape the coastline naturally. However, this beach is visited by over 1.4 million people every year, so protecting public access is important.
- Adding More Sand: A third, more moderate idea is to keep adding sand to the beach. This is called "beach nourishment" and is a "soft" approach. It's not too expensive and is already being done at Goleta Beach. It would also help if sand that builds up behind dams upstream could be moved downstream to naturally wash to the ocean. Keeping the mouth of the slough open by regularly clearing it out also helps prevent water from becoming stagnant.
An example of successful beach nourishment is the Northern Gold Coast Beach Protection Strategy in Australia. There, they pumped millions of cubic meters of sand from a nearby waterway onto the beach and built an artificial reef to protect it. This helped the beach stay wide and healthy. While this worked well there, the conditions at Goleta Beach are different, so this exact method might not work here.
Currently, the area west of the Beachside Cafe is protected by large boulders. There's no scientific proof that these protective measures have caused sand loss on other beaches nearby.
