Table Bluff is a promontory and coastal plateau less than 1 mile (1.6 km) wide, with an elevation of 163 feet (50 m), at the base of South Spit, which encloses the southern portion of Humboldt Bay, about 9 miles (15 km) southwest of Eureka and 4.5 miles (7 km) northwest of Loleta, California. The bluff is 19 miles (31 km) north-northeast of Cape Mendocino and separates Humboldt Bay to the north from the Eel River watershed to the south. Early explorers initially named it Ridge Point, then Brannan Bluff after settler Samuel Brannan; by 1851, however, it was commonly known as Table Bluff. The geology of Humboldt Bay consists of rocks from the Late Jurassic and Cretaceous Franciscan and Yager formations. The Franciscan rocks include graywacke, shale, chert, basalt, and schist, while the Yager rocks comprise graywacke, shale, and conglomerate. Humboldt Bay was once a much larger estuary. During the middle to late Pleistocene, the coastal rivers now known as the Eel, Van Duzen, Elk, and Mad Rivers all flowed into a common bay. Sea levels were about 400 feet (122 m) lower than today, and continental and marine sediments were deposited in a bay that extended farther west than the present-day coastline. These deposits eventually formed the Hookton Formation, which was uplifted and warped, raising Table Bluff and separating the Eel River from the ancient bay. About 15,000 years ago, sea levels began rising following the Last Glacial Maximum. As the sea rose, it flooded ancient stream valleys, forming a series of tidal estuaries. Once sea levels stabilized, sediment deposited by coastal streams formed spits through the action of ocean currents and waves. The extension of these spits created a barrier that protected the shoreward area from open ocean waves, giving rise to present-day Humboldt Bay.

The Wiyot people arrived at Humboldt Bay 1,900 years ago, displacing an earlier Hokan-speaking group. Their language is related to the Algonquian tongues of the Great Plains. Wiyot territory spanned roughly 36 miles (58 km) by 15 miles (24 km), encompassing redwood forests, sandy dunes, wetlands, and prairies. They built canoes by felling redwood trees and fire-hollowing logs, and built houses from redwood planks. Anthropologists estimate that about 98 villages or camps once dotted the bay’s shores and riverbanks. Their diet included acorns, berries, shellfish, salmon, deer, elk, and small game. In 1806, Captain Jonathan Winship, for the Russian-American Company, was the first to enter Humboldt Bay by sea, leading Aleut sea otter hunters in baidarkas. In 1849, Josiah Gregg led an overland expedition in search of a Pacific route. Near starvation, his party emerged on the coast, discovered the bay, and later reported its location in San Francisco. In 1850, two ships sailed from San Francisco with gold miners and settlers who named the bay for Alexander von Humboldt. Settlers soon encroached on Wiyot lands, sparking violence. In the 1860 Wiyot Massacre, a group from Eureka attacked a Wiyot village with firearms, clubs, knives, and hatchets, killing women, children, and elders. Humboldt Bay’s entrance was notoriously dangerous. The first navigational aid, built in 1856 on the north spit near Eureka, proved too low and was often shrouded in fog. In 1892, the US Lighthouse Service built a light station on Table Bluff, later expanded during World War II to include lodging for beach patrols, a lookout, and a radio compass station. The fog signal was discontinued and the light automated in 1953. A Christian youth ministry acquired the property in 1969, renaming it Lighthouse Ranch. In 1971, Gospel Outreach took over; a 1972 documentary chronicled its role as a spiritual refuge (see it here). The state bought it in 2005; and in 2012, it was donated to the Bureau of Land Management, which demolished the remaining buildings.

In 2000, a presidential proclamation created the California Coastal National Monument to protect thousands of islands, rocks, reefs, and pinnacles within 12 nautical miles (22 km) of California’s shoreline. In 2014, the monument expanded to include coastal bluffs, tide pools, onshore dunes, prairies, and riverbanks. Besides providing vital wildlife habitat, these lands were essential to California’s native peoples. In 2017, the monument enlarged further to encompass coastal areas with significant scientific or historic resources, including Lighthouse Ranch—part of the ancestral home and cultural tradition of the Wiyot Tribe, who call it Waluplh. Table Bluff is now a county park and ecological reserve offering public beach access. The reserve covers about 140 acres (56 ha) on Table Bluff’s northwestern tip, of which roughly 94 acres (38 ha) are grassland and the remainder mostly spruce forest. Although most of the reserve has supported agriculture for over a century, about 30 acres (12 ha) remain relatively undisturbed; one portion hosts the largest of California’s four endangered western lily population. An additional 38 acres (15 ha) have been fenced to exclude deer and are managed to enhance the western lily. Table Bluff adjoins the South Humboldt Bay State Marine Recreational Management Area, which protects 512 acres (207 ha) and prohibits the take of all marine resources, with exemptions for Wiyot Tribe members. Read more here and here. Explore more of Table Bluff and Humboldt Bay here: