Copper Roof House

Copper Roof House sits at the south end of Carmel Beach on Scenic Road, near the intersection with Martin Way, where a well-maintained public staircase drops from the road down to the water. The site takes its name from the oxidized copper roof of the Clinton Walker House, a residence Frank Lloyd Wright designed in 1948 and completed in 1951 for Della Walker, who asked him for a house as durable as the rocks and as transparent as the waves.

Directly off the entry point, an extensive giant kelp bed roots on the granite bottom and grows through the water column to the surface, and that canopy forms the site's kelp forest biome. Beneath and around the kelp, large boulders and sandy channels form a patch reef distinct from the kelp-covered rock, a rocky reef biome underneath the kelp canopy. Past the shallow patch, the bottom drops steeply from roughly 40 feet to 80 or 90 feet, where mini pinnacles separated by narrow sand channels rise off the sea floor. The vertical relief there gives the outer section a canyon biome, and all three biomes sit inside the surrounding Carmel Bay State Marine Conservation Area.

Scuba divers and freedivers are the main users, working the kelp on calm days and the outer pinnacles when conditions allow. Boat traffic runs across the outer reef, and conditions turn rough outside calm windows, so newer divers come only on flat days. Parking is roadside along Scenic Road with no lot and no fee, and street spaces fill on summer weekends. Fishing and spearfishing for finfish are legal inside the Carmel Bay SMCA, and all invertebrates are protected.