How to Find a Sea Glass Beach

By Kirsti Scott

Use Domer Fotografie/Shutterstock.com

There’s nothing quite like the thrill of finding beachcombed treasure on the beach. While out getting your vitamin sea and enjoying the benefits of walking the shore, you can find something beautiful or interesting to bring home. There are many beach locations famous for their sea glass, but if you can’t travel halfway around the world to go beachcombing at one of these hotspots, here’s how to find a place near you that might have some beach glass.

Sign on the SS Palo Alto in Aptos, California, in 1958 reads, “Please help us keep the pier & ship clean. Throw all refuse overboard.” (S. Miller).

Until recently in human history, when someone threw something “away,” that often meant into the local waterway: a river running through town, the edge of a lake, over a cliff into the ocean, or dumped right onto a beach and burned. Today, some communities still dump their trash on the beach, either burning it on the sand or waiting for the waves to take it “away.” Over the years, the rubbish tossed in the water gets broken down by wind, water, and waves, eventually becoming pieces of beach glass, sea pottery, beach metal, and many of the other “treasures” beachcombers find.

Beach used last century as the town dump in Fort Bragg, California (Kirsti Scott).

If you’re looking for shells, fossils, or rocks, you can find them on beaches filled with natural beauty. But, if you’re trying to find sea glass, forget the vision of a perfect beach you have in your mind: beautiful soft sand, trees swaying along the shore, birds and other animals making their home at the edge of the waves. Sea glass is usually found where people lived, worked, and discarded their household trash and municipal garbage in the water, or in industrial areas where waste was intentionally or unintentionally thrown into the water. Even in the past, people didn’t see a beautiful beach with turtles nesting or seals swimming in the waves and think, “Yeah! Let’s dump our town’s trash here!”

Rocky dump beaches along lakes, oceans, bays, and seas are a great place to hunt for sea and beach glass (Kirsti Scott).

Look for beaches near cities and towns, or even better a town with a working harbor, where fishing boats busily loaded and unloaded cargo and where trash was routinely thrown overboard. Find a wharf where fisherman tossed their bottles and containers after a long trip. Visit a beach with an amusement park or boardwalk that drew in lots of visitors through the years. Check out a small city with a beach on the edge of town that would have been an easy place for trash collectors to dump their loads.

Left: Colorful sea glass found in former glassmaking areas. Clockwise from top: California, England, Italy, Spain (Kirsti Scott).

Places where glassmaking was part of the local manufacturing scene years ago are often great places to look. The amount of waste glass, broken glassware, or colorful glass pieces make finding sea glass near a glass factory or studio particularly fruitful.

Even a town known for its sugar-sand beaches and abundant local wildlife might have a harbor or industrial area to comb.

Currents, tides, and weather can affect the quantity and quality of the glass found. Sea glass is smoothed as it is brushed against sand and rocks, dragged by currents, and pulled in and out multiple times a day by tides. Waves created by storms stir up the glass and move it around, eventually tossing some of it up on the beach. Rocky beaches sometimes trap the sea glass on the beach. Depending on the shoreline’s shape and local currents, some beaches are filled with sea glass, while on others, the currents pull the glass out to sea or down the coast. Since there are so many factors in making a sea glass beach—local history, industry, the shoreline, and water conditions—don’t be disappointed if you don’t find your dream sea glass beach right away.

Just keep exploring, and hopefully you’ll find your new favorite beachcombing spot along the way.

Learn more about the best beaches and destinations for sea and beach glass, seashells, fossils, rocks, and more beach finds around the world. Articles ›

This article appeared in Beachcombing Magazine Volume 44 September/October 2024