Bodega Head, Coastal promontory and summit in Sonoma County, United States.
Bodega Head is a promontory on the Pacific coast of Sonoma County, California, about 40 miles northwest of San Francisco. The peninsula is roughly 4 miles long and 1 mile wide, with exposed continental granite on its west side and Franciscan Complex oceanic rocks on the mainland to the east. It shelters Bodega Bay and Bodega Harbor, and Sonoma Coast State Beach runs along its south side.
Bodega Head is the northern tip of the Salinian Block, granite torn from the continent when the San Andreas Fault formed about 20 million years ago and carried hundreds of miles north. The fault runs between the promontory and the mainland; in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake the head shifted about 15 feet. A Pacific Gas & Electric plan for a nuclear plant here was abandoned in 1964 over environmental and earthquake concerns.
The peninsula was probably inhabited by the Coast Miwok before Europeans arrived. Campbell Cove, on the east side of the promontory, is a candidate for Sir Francis Drake's 1579 landing site, though the German-language source gives 1577. Visitors can look for the cove while walking the east shore.
The site is accessible via marked trails that lead from the parking area to several viewpoints along the headland. These paths offer good opportunities to observe migrating gray whales during the winter and early spring months.
Bodega Head is the northern tip of the Salinian Block, a granite province torn from the continent when the San Andreas Fault formed about 20 million years ago and carried hundreds of miles north. Its rock matches the core of the Sierra Nevada, not the Franciscan Complex across the fault.
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