Limantour Beach is a long, narrow spit in Point Reyes National Seashore, between Drakes Bay and Limantour Estero, roughly 15 miles (24 km) northwest of Bolinas and 6 miles (10 km) southwest of Point Reyes Station, California. The beach and estuary take their name from Joseph Yves Limantour, a French merchant and sea captain whose schooner, the Ayacucho, wrecked on Point Reyes in October 1841. Most of the cargo was saved, but Limantour, stranded with no way home, sold it for cash and credit to local landowners. He later tried to parlay that goodwill into one of California’s boldest land grabs: in the 1850s he claimed hundreds of thousands of acres, including much of San Francisco, under Mexican land grants that a federal investigation found in 1858 to be forgeries. He fled to Mexico and never returned.

Drakes Bay, on the south side of Point Reyes, was named in 1875 for Sir Francis Drake. A stretch of its shoreline forms a National Historic Landmark district and is believed to include the site of Drake’s 1579 landfall, when he claimed the region for England as New Albion. The bay is also where the Spanish Manila galleon San Agustín broke apart in a storm in 1595, after its captain, Sebastián Rodríguez Cermeño, a Portuguese navigator sailing for Spain, put in to resupply en route from Manila to Acapulco. Both Drake and Cermeño made contact with the local Coast Miwok. Archaeologists have identified 15 Miwok village sites around the bay containing European goods, including Chinese porcelain and iron spikes, likely salvaged from the wrecked galleon.

Drakes Bay is fed by Drakes Estero and Limantour Estero, an expansive estuarine system on the Point Reyes peninsula. Drakes Estero is consistently documented as one of the largest mainland harbor-seal pupping colonies in California, roughly 20% of the state’s mainland population. The estuary’s eelgrass beds are a well-documented stopover for large numbers of migratory shorebirds and waterfowl. Two marine protected areas established by California in 2009 safeguard these waters: Estero de Limantour State Marine Reserve and Drakes Estero State Marine Conservation Area. Point Reyes State Marine Reserve and Point Reyes State Marine Conservation Area, covering nearshore waters elsewhere on the peninsula, also lie within Drakes Bay. Read more here and here. Explore more of Limantour Estuary and Drakes Bay here: