Newport Back Bay

This past month has been interesting to say the least. We started landscaping our front and back yards to create edible landscapes. I finished both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. We set up our old home for renters. Needless to say, we haven’t had a chance to get out in nature as much as we’d like, so when the opportunity arose to visit Newport Back Bay, we took advantage!

We recently purchased the OC Parks Annual Pass and are excited to use it soon as a family of 4!

Down in the Bay

Newport Back Bay used to have more trails going directly through the marsh, which have since been closed off. I remember one of my first times visiting, the only way to get through a certain section was to walk on precariously placed wooden planks. Now, only well-established dirt paths remain. Sort of a bummer, but still a fun walk.

For this first shot, I wanted to capture not just the water in the marsh, but also a sense of vertical scale relative to street level. As you can see in the upper third of the image, there are street lights – this is the main road leading to the parking lot. Once you’re down at marsh level, it’s relatively quiet from all of the street noise. But since the walking paths are restricted to the perimeter now, it’s not as quiet as some of the previously accessible paths.

For this next shot, I wanted to capture the lone bird, plus the turbulence of the water. It was quite windy the day we went, and you can see that in the ripples in the water.

Above the Bay

There are very few places in Orange County that give a good look into a marsh environment, and Newport Back Bay is one of them. There are a couple of trails that take you around the perimeter of the marsh, giving great views of the marsh and the wildlife living there. For this next shot, I zoomed in a bit to 31mm to avoid some foliage. I love the yellow and brown hues contrasted against the blue water. Also, the stream guides my eyes from the front to the bay in the back.

I really like this next shot. About a week before we visited Newport Back Bay, we had a pretty decent rain (decent for Southern California, anyway). The snow-capped mountains in the background are either from the Mt. Baldy or the San Bernardino area. Either way, a view like that only lasts a little while in Orange County, and I always love capturing it when I see it. I particularly like this shot because of the birds frozen in midair, as well as the path in the lower right. For the birds, I chose a fast shutter speed to ensure their wings did not get blurred. I ended up cropping the image to remove a bit of the sky and to have the birds take up more of the frame.

I also like the birds in this last shot of the set. Again, I used a fast shutter speed in order to get the wings sharp. I’ve found that anything faster than 1/1000sec is typically good enough at capturing birds in flight. With the water sparkling on the right and the birds flying overhead – I feel like this image captures what most days in South Orange County looks like.

A Bit of History of Newport Back Bay

Mammoth, bison, and giant sloth fossils have been found in the sedimentary deposits on top of a marine terrace. Makes me want to look closer when I visit it next time!

The earliest known human inhabitants were the Gabrielino Tribe, who lived there about 9,000 years ago for 2,000 years. They disappeared from the area within 50 years of the mission period. Until 1862, Upper Newport Bay emptied into the Pacific Ocean.

In 1864, James Irvine acquired the land for 37 cents an acre that supported a salt works until floods destroyed the area. Shell harvesting continued to provide chicken feed supplements.

The preservation of Upper Newport Bay began in the 1960s when the area was going to be used to develop waterskiing. After ten years of lawsuits from citizens concerned about the environment, the underdeveloped portions of the area became a 752-acre ecological reserve. In 1989, the county acquired 135 acres including the bluffs surrounding the reserve, which is now the Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve.

References

“History”. OC Parks. Accessed February 2nd, 2021.