Jug Handle Cove is a California State Natural Preserve made up of a series of ancient marine terraces, known as the Ecological Staircase, which exhibit different stages of ecological succession at the mouth of Jug Handle Creek, about 5 miles (8 km) south of Fort Bragg and 5 miles (8 km) north of Mendocino, California. The cove is named after Jug Handle Gulch, so named in 1941 because the old road that crossed it formed a jug-handle turn. The bedrock at Jug Handle Cove is part of the Franciscan Complex, a terrane that was scraped, bent, buried, exhumed and eventually smeared against the North American continent. It consists mainly of a partially metamorphosed sandstone called greywacke. Marine terraces are prominent landforms along the Pacific coast of northern California, and although they are common features, erosion has rendered them difficult to see except in rare places such as Jug Handle State Natural Reserve.  The terraces are elevated wave-cut platforms formed by fluctuations in sea level and tectonic uplift. The principal driver of uplift at Jug Handle Cove is the seismically active boundary between the North American Plate and the Pacific Plate at the San Andreas Fault, about 3.5 miles (5.6 km) offshore. This section of coastline has been rising for about 500,000 years, at an average rate of 0.8–1.2 inches (2–3 cm) per century. During the Pleistocene, sea level fluctuated with the growth and decay of continental ice sheets, dropping during glacial periods and rising during interglacials. Waves are constantly eroding the shoreline, gradually forming nearly horizontal wave-cut platforms. Over millennia, these platforms were uplifted, creating the terraces visible today. Each terrace at Jug Handle Cove has been above water about 100,000 years longer than the one below it.

The terraces have been inhabited by humans for thousands of years. Evidence of the Mitom Pomo (or Mtom-kai Pomo) on the North Coast dates back 3,000 years. Although the main Mitom villages were near present-day Willits, they made periodic visits to the coast to gather food. In the 1850s the Mitom lifestyle changed drastically with the influx of American settlers after California’s statehood. Diseases took a heavy toll and logging camps displaced seasonal villages at the mouths of rivers. The Mitom were forced to give up their lands and move to reservations. In 1850 the San Francisco-bound brig Frolic sank north of what is now Point Cabrillo, and salvagers noticed the seemingly endless stands of redwood forest. Two years later a sawmill was built near the mouth of the Big River, and settlers began arriving. In 1860 William H. Kelley and William T. Rundle bought 5,000 acres (2,023 ha) of forest land in the Caspar Creek basin, founded the Caspar Lumber Company and built a second sawmill. In 1861 Jacob G. Jackson was brought in as a partner, and by 1864 he had taken over the lumber company, and it became one of the most successful logging enterprises on the Mendocino coast. By the mid-1940s the old-growth timberlands were severely depleted, and in 1947 the State of California bought nearly 50,000 acres (20,234 ha) of forest land from the Caspar Lumber Company. During the 1960s the conservationist John Olmsted worked with Dr Hans Jenny on a campaign to protect the area. In 1962 a forest reserve of 250 acres (101 ha) was established to safeguard the pygmy forest on the third marine terrace above Jug Handle Creek, and in 1969 the National Park Service designated it a National Natural Landmark. However, developers were aggressively pursuing access to the lower terraces. In 1970 the non-profit California Institute of Man in Nature purchased the land, and in 1975 the property was transferred to the state and, along with additional parcels owned by the Caspar Lumber Company, Pacific Holiday Lodge Corporation, Save the Redwoods League and others, it became Jug Handle State Natural Reserve in 1977.

The marine terraces at Jug Handle State Natural Preserve are a famous example of soil development and ecological succession among plant ecologists. Although each terrace evolved from the same greywacke sandstone, each has been weathered for different lengths of time, creating different soil types and, consequently, supporting different plant communities. All 5 terraces form what is known as the Ecological Staircase. The lowest terrace supports three plant communities: North Coast Bluff Scrub, Coastal Prairie and Bishop Pine Forest. The second terrace, farther from the ocean’s salt-laden breezes, is dominated by redwoods, which have a limited range extending from southern Oregon to central California, where summer fog and moderate temperatures prevail. The third terrace features a distinctive pygmy forest of 5–10-foot (1.5–3.0 m) cypresses and pines, along with dwarfed rhododendrons, manzanitas and huckleberries. This rare plant community occurs only in a few places where marine terraces have remained flat for half a million years of geological uplift. The soils here are 1,000 times more acidic than those of the redwood forest. Heavy winter rains have leached iron and other nutrients from the surface, washing them into the subsoil. Under these acidic conditions, the iron combines with eroding bedrock to form a dense hardpan about 18 inches (46 cm) below the surface. Extremely acidic, nutrient-poor conditions, together with the shallow hardpan, account for the stunted, sparse growth of the pygmy forest. Read more here and here. Explore more of Jug Handle Cove and the Ecological Staircase here: