The Unusual History Of A Beach Littered With Broken Ceramics

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People visit the beach for different reasons. Some go to get a suntan and others just to relax. There is also a group that enjoys exercising on the beach.

One of the interesting pastimes that many people enjoy when visiting a beach is searching for treasure. They may not find gold and silver very often, but on many beaches, you will find seashells, sea glass, and maybe even some shark teeth.

There’s also a beach along the San Francisco Bay shoreline known as Tepco Beach. If you find yourself on that beach, you will also find a lot of ceramic pieces.

According to the Atlas Obscura, many people visit the area because they want to find those broken pieces of ceramic dishes, but the history behind it is largely unknown. In El Cerrito, California, there was a porcelain and Chinaware company that operated between 1930 and 1968.

Atlas Obscura notes that John Pagliero, an Italian immigrant, started the business and the beach was used as a dumping ground for any damaged or chipped dishes.

Even though many people tend to be aware of the environment and do their part to save the earth, they still enjoy visiting the beach and what they are able to find. Many people who go to Tapco Beach also post their finds on the Facebook page for visitors.

Some people go to the beach to find vintage dishes, or at least part of them, from a company that has long since gone out of business. They especially enjoy finding dishes that are in one piece.

Others simply go to find beautiful pieces of broken ceramic and other artifacts. Rather than looking at this as a pile of trash, they consider it to be a tourist destination.

One visitor wrote about taking their four children and spending hours looking for broken treasures and crabs hiding under plates.

This may make you wonder if walking on broken porcelain is dangerous. The visitor said that it is a “little crazy” to bring children to such a place but they hope that the edges have since rounded off since they have been there for eight decades.

They then went on to mention that sharp edges do still exist so you shouldn’t go barefoot.

Here are some pictures of low tide last year:

Something else that people look for on Tepco beach are tiny Buddha heads. These weren’t made by the same company but an artist dropped them into the water near the Iowa Hill, Bridge Road in Colfax, and some of them ended up on the beach.

Government officials had even gone to a nearby gift shop and confiscated them, thinking they were ancient artifacts. The owner of the shop paid good money to a treasure hunter.

I guess the old saying still stands true, let the buyer beware.
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