Why Not to Visit the Little River Sinkhole

Most people know about Glass Beach if they know about Fort Bragg, and they have one of two or three opinions about it. Either they encourage you to visit or they don’t; either they grab glass by the bucketful or they leave it where it lies; either they regard it as a trash heap or as potential jewelry, temporarily feralized by social pragmatism but otherwise potent with history and the grace of human intervention, or they see it as old school urban archaeology carried out democratically and uncritically on a mass scale. Everyone should visit Glass Beach at least once and make up their own mind about it. There are, however, a few other unique or at least interesting things in the area that people visiting from distant towns should probably not visit, for reasons I will discuss.

On top of the list of sites nobody should see is the Little River Sinkhole, a geographic anomaly located behind a small rural cemetery that people don’t want to see disturbed. The first great reason not to stop there is because you will probably get rear-ended or come close to it either trying to get onto the narrow gravel shoulder provided, or trying to leave when you are done, because of the little hill

You will not be able to get your car past the gate without a key.

If you have the guts and the luck to get your vehicle off the road without being collided with or causing a collision among people making evasive maneuvers to avoid crashing into you, you will be able to walk down the narrow trail that leads to the back of the cemetery and into the wooded headland beyond. You will notice the little sign that explains how the sinkhole was created—the rather obvious reason given is subterranean erosion--and you will be able to see into the hole almost as soon as you get through the first tangle of poison oak and blackberry vines. You will be disappointed by how small and mundane it seems.

It would be easy to miss the protective rail, part of which is at this point arranged as a warning sign on the small round beach a hundred feet or so below. It’s down there because of continuing erosion on the rim of the hole, which has left several tall trees upside down but still partially rooted and apparently alive, dangling over space. A drunk or inattentive walker could easily stumble once or twice and find themselves dangling from such suspended vegetation like a cartoon character.

There is a trail to the bottom if you have even more guts, after coming face-to-face with the bluff, and listening for a moment to the eerie echo of surf through the rocky tunnel below. On a high tide you will watch the surf sweep in and spread deep onto the beach. In storms the situation becomes spectacular but of course hazardous, moreso because the forest of bull pines surrounding the sinkhole is of brittle old trees likely to break apart in any stiff wind.

Once you’ve avoided falling over the edge, getting tangled in vines or raked across the ankles with poison oak, you can sneak around the protective wire fence and use the rope to descend the “trail” to the bottom. It’s not much more than a dirt scrape across an old slide, steep as going into a well in some places, but only dangerous if you lose your grip on the rope.

Once you make it to the beach, unpack the beers and sandwiches. If you time it right you might catch a little sunshine on the most exclusive of California beaches. I’ve only been down to it once, thirty years ago. It was nice.

People can and do come through the tunnel on kayaks and even small boats, when the tide is high enough and the swell easy enough. The legends of bootlegging that went on using that tunnel back in the Prohibition era are a colorful chapter in coastal history. It would have been a likely place to try and land some liquor, if you had some to land, but an alert sheriff would have been able to post a guard nearby in such a way that would have ensured capturing the smugglers after they had made it up the hill with the hooch, but before they had loaded the jalopy.

Either way, you’ll feel like a pirate after you have snaked your way down and then back up, buzzed or not on the way out.

There’s a great whale-watching bluff just beyond the sinkhole, but it is of course a dangerous place to stand unless you remain well back in the pines. There’s a Goat Rock not far out, and a bell buoy rocking in the direction of Little River harbor, but these kinds of things are visible elsewhere with a lot less trouble involved.

The safe little cove created by offshore rocks made Little River a popular anchorage in the days of busy ship traffic on the coast; nowadays the cove is a popular sea kayaking destination for the same reason. Those who prefer safety can find plenty of it within the rocky barrier, while those who want thrills can paddle a little farther and find plenty of those.

Unfortunately, the parking lot at Van Damme is always too crowded to find a spot—you’ll see an endless parade of fancy SUVs jockeying for spots to unload a few thousand dollars’ worth of sporting equipment, while modeling the latest in skintight sportswear, fleece jackets, fancy kayaking helmets and otherwise useless shoes, but damned if they will let you, humble reader, past the accountant from Pleasanton who’s been there twenty minutes, bravely holding up his hand while his wife dashes up the hill to the market for some more bottled water.

In short, there’s no good reason to visit the Little River Sinkhole: it’s overrated as a curiosity, since it’s really nothing more than an unexpected hole in the ground with an awkward and dangerous connection to the ocean. You will certainly come down with a vicious case of poison oak, or maybe step on some deadly hemlock in your blind panic to escape the forest of twisted old trunks and ivy.

It's all but impossible to take a photo that actually impresses upon a viewer the somewhat ironic splendor of an oceanic hole in the ground out behind the old school cemetery, full of the remains of coastal pioneers with names familiar to local historians but mostly obscure to the outside world, and people you try and describe it to will have a hard time not looking at their phones while you speak.

It’s boring, dangerous, and seems a little beside the point. You came to Fort Bragg to find sea glass and have a have a few drinks, or maybe ride the Skunk train on one of those special event culinary tours of the redwoods while celebrating an anniversary, not to dodge poison oak and try to peek over bluffs without getting into a perilous predicament on the end of a rope.

#LittleRiver #Sinkhole #cemetery #bootlegging