Living in a Liquid Landscape
The Smith River settled in its present course thousands of years ago. After episodes of flood, retreat, and meander from south to north, the river left behind a shallow, wet, coastal plain with a natural lagoon at its center. Eons more of tides, quakes, tsunamis, and severe storms deposited huge loads of ocean sand onto the shore. Winds swept the sand into dunes, covering and enclosing the waters, trapping them from the sea.
Lake Earl is the largest estuarine lagoon on the North American continental west coast. Originally misnamed as two lakes–Earl and Tolowa–the waters actually form a single estuarine lagoon filled with brackish and fresh water, joined by a narrow passage and separated from the ocean by a sandy berm. Winter rains and freshwater streams cause Lake Earl to rise and fall with the seasons. When the water level in the estuary rises high enough, a channel opens in the sandbar. The water drains to the sea then the tidal bore rushes back in, creating a biotic concoction of fresh and saline water, ocean detritus, and benthic micro-organisms—the basis of the food chain to support this marvelous ecosystem.
The nutrient-rich fluctuating water sustains more than a dozen fish species, including the endangered tidewater goby. Thousands of waterfowl, shorebirds, and songbirds migrating on the Pacific Flyway descend each spring and fall to rest, nest, and feed. You may glimpse a bald eagle or peregrine falcon hunting from the forested wetland edge. Canvasback, mallard, Canada geese, tundra swan, wood duck, and grebe frequent the open water. More elusive American bittern and Virginia rail hide in the bulrushes. You may hear a red-winged blackbird.
Winter rain fills vernal pools and irrigates native plants. Spring is the time for flower-lovers. Coastal forests and meadows bloom with delicate-looking but sturdy wildflowers adapted to wind and sand—calypso orchids, purple iris, sea thrift, beach morning glory, yellow sand verbena, and the extremely rare silvery phacelia—found nowhere else in California. From their winter underground nests in the sand, native bees emerge to pollinate new blooms.
In late spring strong northerly winds deposit fresh sand to the beaches and dunes. Look for tracks—bear, cougar, deer, raccoon, and porcupine. Summer is dry, but a high water table sustains many hidden ponds for beaver and river otter. Summer’s inland heat draws the dense fog that dampens dune plants and the shore pine, strung with beard-like lichen.
Coast pine, grand fir, and Sitka spruce forests grow on the older stabilized dunes and alongside coastal meadows. The forest canopy shades a dense carpet of bracken fern, false lily-of-the-valley, and kinnikinnick. Thickets of huckleberry, salmonberry, and thimbleberry—popular with bears, birds, and hikers—ripen in summer. With autumn rains, mushrooms and fungi erupt from the forest floor.
Since the late 1800s, 90% of California’s wetlands and coastal dunes have been lost to agriculture and urbanization. This remote Tolowa Coast remains uniquely and biologically diverse with hundreds of living species.