Francesca Scalpi

GOAT ROCK SP (Click on thumbnail for full image)
Lying just south of the mouth of the Russian River, Goat Rock Beach has white-capped waves, sea stacks, marine terraces, a natural bridge, sand dunes, a fine exposure of our state rock—serpentinite—and evidence of active tectonics shaping the landscape over hundreds of thousands of years.

At the mouth of the Russian River there is a resident harbor seal colony haul out.

Flat-topped Goat Rock was once a sea stack connected to land by a sand bar. Such a bar of sand or gravel that connects an island, even one as small as a sea stack, to land is called a tombolo. The Goat Rock tombolo used to be underwater at high tide, turning Goat Rock into an island and a proper sea stack. The tombolo has since been turned into a parking lot, and now you can climb right onto Goat Rock at any tide.

During heavy surf Goat Rock beach can be breached by the Pacific Ocean and at times close the mouth of the Russian River.

Jenner has a resident Pacific harbor seals colony. Each spring a large sand spit builds up here, at the mouth of the Russian River at Goat Rock Beach in the Sonoma Coast State Park, and provides an ideal rookery— an area where seals feel safe to give birth, rear their pups, and forage for food.