Beaches
Mendocino Headlands State Park contains two publicly accessible beaches.
Big River Beach is at the mouth of the Big River, south of the town; it is a wide sandy beach that often has a lagoon where the river meets the Pacific Ocean. It can be reached via footpaths from the east end of Mendocino (on Main Street behind the Presbyterian Church) or from a parking lot on the inland side of State Route 1 that also serves the Big River Unit.
Portuguese Beach is a smaller cove, under the headlands at the west end of Main Street. From the end of the street, a footpath along the headlands leads to a staircase down onto the beach.
Below the rest of the headlands to the north, there are many small coves that are accessible only by boat.
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Famous quotes containing the word beaches:
“They commonly celebrate those beaches only which have a hotel on them, not those which have a humane house alone. But I wished to see that seashore where man’s works are wrecks; to put up at the true Atlantic House, where the ocean is land-lord as well as sea-lord, and comes ashore without a wharf for the landing; where the crumbling land is the only invalid, or at best is but dry land, and that is all you can say of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)