Pelican Lake (Marin County, California)


Pelican Lake is a small lake in the southern portion of the Point Reyes National Seashore, northwest of Bolinas. The lake sits at an elevation of and has an outflow via the short Pelican Lake Creek southwest through a notch in the coastal cliffs onto Double Point's Bolsa Beach. Pelican Lake is one of the five Coast Trail Lakes, along with Bass Lake, Crystal Lake, Ocean Lake and Wildcat Lake. Alamere Falls is about to the northwest.

Geology

As with the other nearby lakes in the southeast portion of the Point Reyes peninsula, Pelican Lake occupies a natural synclinal depression formed behind blocks of rock displaced by landslides within the past 10,000 years. The depressions forming Crystal, Pelican and Bass lakes appear to have been caused by the Double Point Slide, which covers an area of about. The rocks involved in the landslide are shale, chert and sandstone, some similar to Miocene rocks of the Monterey Formation and others to Pliocene rocks from the Central Coast Ranges. The process that caused these slides is ongoing, with several nearby slides caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and others as recently as 1956.
Prior to geological research in the 1960s, the area was considered to be sufficiently stable for the U.S. Army to construct an underground artillery control facility within the North Point headland directly west of Pelican Lake in 1944. These concrete structures were filled in by the National Park Service after it assumed control of the area, but could be exposed by future landslides.

Ecology

The lake is within the Southern Inverness Ridge region of the Point Reyes National Seashore, in an area of coastal scrub and grassland. In this coastal zone there are open stands of coyote brush, often with native grasses such as California oatgrass and purple needlegrass. The other dominant plants in this ecosystem are California sage brush, black sage, sticky monkeyflower, poison oak, California coffeeberry and tree lupine.
Around Pelican Lake and the neighboring lakes are thick growths of willow In the lake margins can be found common tule, California bulrush, cat-tail and sedges. The lake has been stocked with warm-water game fish.
On the slopes above the coastal lakes, the flora is characterized by stands of Douglas fir.
Pelican Lake is adjacent to the Double Point Area of Special Biological Significance, established in 1974 primarily to protect the large population of harbor seals that raise pups on the beach between April and June each year.