VA Kiptopeke State Park

 #33 2022 52-Hike Trail Challenge: Beach and Dunes - 2mi

I visited Kiptopeke State Park to investigate one of the hidden geological wonders of Virginia's Eastern Shore. A short hike through the dunes and along the beach was all I could manage as the park had all east side trails closed for two days for an archery hunt. Oh well.  I said hello to the Brown Pelicans and off I went to see what I couldn't see.

The park is located on the lower Chesapeake Bay shoreline and was once the grounds for the Little Creek-Cape Charles Ferry that operated six ferry boats from this terminal to the Newport News area until 1964 when the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel was constructed. Many of the ferries that operated here were transferred to the new (at that time) Cape May-Lewes Ferry crossing on the Delaware River. None of these remain in use today. I met a fisherman on the now-defunct terminal pier who used to make the 85-minute crossing from here to his job at Langley AFB. While we talked, a young Brown Pelican landed on a nearby rail to eye the fisherman's bait bucket. 

From Virginia Rocks, Albert Dickas, 2019

From the pier I got a great north view of what I'd come to see as the sweep of Chesapeake shoreline arced south to northwest, a feature that hinted at what was below me and the hundreds of Brown Pelicans that congregated on the terminal's famous concrete ships. According to Dr. Albert Dickas, author of Virginia Rocks: A Guide to Geological Sites of the Old Dominion (2019): 

Visitors to Kiptokeke State Park are uncommonly rich in praise in regard to its setting: stupendous, beautiful, awesome. If those same visitors could travel back some 35 million years, however, their perceptions of the same countryside would most certainly be different - explosive, destructive, incinerating, The same wordsmith would certainly categorize these unsettling and disturbing descriptions as cataclysmic. (p.14)

On the edge of a buried impact crater deep underground

I walked the inside sweep of the beach all the way to the north boundary then cut across the dunes on trail and boardwalk to reach the top of the bluff. Though the crater is deep beneath me here, its dimensions are well known thanks to intensive seafloor investigations in this area conducted in the 1980s. Soundings and core sampling confirmed that a major impact event had occurred here and through a series core drillings that brought up sections of fused glass, shocked quartz, breccia, and clastic rocks - the signature geology of an impact crater - the extent of this catastrophic strike was finally understood. 

Crossing the forested dunes

Geologists estimate that the large meteor was traveling at 70,000 mph when it slammed into the ocean. It's impact created a 50-mile-wide crater and a pressure wave that forced material from the ocean floor thirty miles into the atmosphere. The dinosaurs had been long gone, and humans hadn't yet appeared on the scene, but the impact caused a major extinction event for marine life in the west Atlantic region. To look out from the observation deck today at the serene blue waters of the Chesapeake it is not hard to see that lower bay geography was shaped by this cataclysmic event.

Young maritime forest

I walked through a young maritime forest that seemed to be competing with the ever-moving dunes. This is dynamic landscape, hilly and always being pushed along by sea winds. In a valley between dunes I spied a White Tailed Deer peering up at me, safe for now from the bow hunters who were working the other side of the park. The swales are deep while the ridges are high while aspect and slope of the dune faces all create micro-habitats for different plant communities. I found stands of Beautyberry along the edge of the mature forest and out on the west-facing dunes were clumps of Northern Seaside Goldenrod still in full bloom in early November and covered with butterflies.

American Beautyberry, Callicarpa americana

Common Buckeye, Junonia coenia

Monarch, Daneus plexippus

I was astounded by the number of butterflies. Monarchs, Skippers, Duskywings, Painted Ladies, Mourning Cloaks, Fritillaries, Sulphur and Whites. The big bushes of Goldenrod seemed to flash and dance in the bright sun as a hundred butterflies moved south along sweep of dunes and beach. The tip  of the Eastern Shore peninsula was just a few miles away, ending in the great swath of marsh and grassy islands of the National Wildlife Refuge.  I was witnessing a bottleneck of migrating butterflies, some traveling short distances and not to leave the land of the Eastern Shore while others like the Monarchs will congregate for the open water crossing to the western shore then continue their long trek south.

Groundsel Bush, Baccharis halimifolia

Fluffy achenes 

I walked back to the fishing pier/ ferry terminal and took in again the long view of the coast of the Chesapeake and how fragile yet resilient it seems. These are not contradictions to hold in one's mind, but partners of process in evolution and adaption. The scene up and down the shoreline was both one of vulnerability to storms, heat, cold, and even the occasional meteor strike (geologically speaking). While the Appalachian Mountains - shaped by continental collision - were now receiving the first snowfall, the lower dunes and marshes of the Lower Shore - shaped by an impact crater - were blanketed in the silvery white of Groundsel, the largest members of the native asters. 

Notes:

More information on the buried impact crater - great graphics and images. http://www.virginiaplaces.org/geology/bolide.html

From the Kiptopeke State Park website:

"The site was purchased by the Virginia Ferry Corporation for the northern terminus of the Norfolk to Eastern Shore Ferry. In 1949, when the terminus was moved from Cape Charles, the site was named Kiptopeke Beach in honor of the younger brother of a king of the Accawmack Indians who had befriended early settlers to the area. Kiptopeke means Big Water. In 1950 the terminus opened after the completion of a $2.75 million pier, promoted as the world's largest and most modern ferry pier. Ferry service ended in 1964 when the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel was opened. In May 1992 the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation bought 375 acres from John Maddox, who had operated the property as Kiptopeke Beach Family Resort. The park opened on Memorial Day weekend in 1992. In 1999, an adjacent 160 acres was purchased on the south end of the park. Then one acre next to the park’s contact station was bought in 2000. In 2009 another 26 acres were bought, bringing the park’s total acreage to 562 acres. A total of 126 acres has been reforested in the park."