Located on the shores of Hanapepe Bay on the island of Kauai, in the Hanapepe industrial area near Port Allen Harbor, Glass Beach is a small rocky basaltic shoreline with millions of sea glass pieces - brown, aqua-colored, clear green, and blue. The gas tanks of the nearby refinery are visible from one side of the beach, which hinders the ethereal atmosphere of the shoreline. More than a century ago, this beach was chosen as a location to dispose of many of Kauai's unwanted industrial items, including huge metal buildings, windows, shattered bottles, and auto glass. The majority of the glass that washed up on this beach was made of broken vehicles and bottle glass that were dumped years ago and have been smoothened by moving ocean water and time. It is a result of both garbage dumping and a special geological formation called the Swiss Cheese Shoreline that serves as the anvil upon which the waves smash the broken glass to create the famous sea glass found on the beach. It takes the ocean between 10 and 30 years to produce each piece of frosted sea glass, and the resulting fragment is a frosted, jelly bean-like pebble. In addition, there is a rugged path leading to McBryde Sugar Plantation Cemetery near the beach.
