Leggett, CA Coastal Erosion Rate
What USGS measures 12.1 miles south of Leggett, CA
The coast 12.1 miles south of Leggett, CA has been retreating at a measured 0.43 feet a year, USGS's own long-term rate for this stretch, built from historical shoreline positions rather than a single survey. At that rate, the shoreline has lost roughly 4.3 feet over the last decade.
What "Leggett" means on this page
This is a roughly 3.5-mile stretch of coast, not one address or parcel - USGS's own transects run every few hundred feet, but that's finer than any one property needs, so this page reports the stretch nearest Leggett, CA. Centered near 39.70°N, 123.80°W. The survey behind it runs to 1852-2016, in USGS's California assessment, using the LRR method. Shoreline surveys aren't repeated every year, so this is the most recent long-term measurement USGS has published for this coast, not a live reading.
25 years at this rate
If 0.43 ft/yr holds for the next 25 years, the coast 12.1 miles south of Leggett, CA would retreat roughly 11 more feet, a projection, not a certainty: erosion rates shift with storms, sediment supply and any armoring built in the meantime.
What backs this reading up
82 transects feed this segment's number; 95% of them individually measured retreat. The published margin on this reading runs ±0.28 ft/yr. Among the 1211 US coastal segments with a measurable trend, this one ranks 337 for erosion, 1 being the fastest-retreating coast in the dataset. Source: USGS National Shoreline Change data release (ScienceBase, DOI 10.5066/P94J0K7Z), Kratzmann 2024 / Data Report 1187. Rank 99 nationally for erosion belongs to South Padre Island, TX, 1792 miles from this stretch, measured at 2.78 ft/yr, 6.5x this stretch's rate. 2.4 miles up the coast, Leggett, CA shows the same lack of a significant trend.
One address near Leggett: the Coastal Change Hazards Portal zooms past this stretch to the underlying map.