Jug Handle State Natural Reserve

Jug Handle State Natural Reserve is a state park unit of California, United States, preserving a series of marine terraces each exhibiting a different stage of ecological succession. It is located on California State Route 1 north of the village of Caspar, 5mi equidistant between the towns of Mendocino and Fort Bragg. The 776acre park was established in 1976.Natural historyThe reserve encompasses five marine terraces along the Pacific coast, cut by wave action over millennia as the sea level fluctuated and the land underwent tectonic uplift. Each terrace has been above water about 100,000 years longer than the level below it. Consequently, each terrace contains a different plant community, with each level showing 100,000 years of progression through the stages of ecological succession. The lowest terrace supports prairie, the second bears a redwood forest, and the third exhibits a unique pygmy forest of 5to cypresses and pines and dwarfed shrubs of rhododendron, manzanita, and huckleberry. The Ecological Staircase is a 2.5mi trail which traverses these three terraces from the coast to inland. According to the California Department of Parks and Recreation, "few places on earth display a more complete record of ecological succession." While marine terraces formed along much of the California coast, erosion has rendered them indistinct except in rare places like Jug Handle State Natural Reserve.