EXPERIENCE DESCRIPTION
Van Damme State Beach sits at the mouth of Little River where it meets the Pacific in a sheltered cove — a rarity on this stretch of coast where most beaches face open ocean. The incoming tide creates a shallow lagoon ideal for wading and tide pool exploration, and dogs are welcome. Early mornings are the best time to have the beach nearly to yourself. The adjacent Van Damme State Park trail network begins here and winds inland through a pygmy forest of centuries-old, inches-tall cypress and pine — one of the stranger and more memorable short hikes on the North Coast, where soil acidification over millennia has stunted trees that are hundreds of years old into bonsai-scale specimens a few feet high.
OPERATOR STORY
Van Damme State Park is managed by California State Parks and encompasses both the sheltered beach cove at the mouth of Little River and the inland trail network through one of the rarest plant communities in California — a pygmy forest where centuries of soil acidification have produced mature cypress and pine trees that stand only a few feet tall. The park protects one of the best-preserved stretches of the Mendocino Coast's coastal and riparian habitat.
