Timber Cove

Timber Cove is a small rocky cove on Highway 1 between Ocean Cove to the north and Fort Ross to the south, set at the private Timber Cove Boat Landing and Campground. The cove is well-sheltered from the prevailing northwest wind and swell, one of the calmest small-craft launches on the Sonoma Coast, and it functions as a launch of last resort on days when the outer coast is closing out. A working boat hoist at the landing handles trailered craft up to about 17 feet, one of the few hoists on this stretch of coast. Depths inside the cove run 5 to 20 feet, and the outer reef reaches 25 to 45 feet.

Timber Cove was a doghole port during the redwood-lumber era. NOAA's Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary documents the site by name: schooners hauled dressed lumber from a chute above the cove, and the doghole tag referred to coves so tight that they were only big enough for a dog to turn around in. The trade ran from the 1860s into the early 1900s, and much of the shipwreck history on this coast comes out of that period.

Cobble and boulder cover the cove floor and outer reef, and much of that structure now sits bare after the sea urchin barrens took hold. That unkelped rock is a rocky reef biome. Seasonal bull kelp returns to the outer reef each summer, an annual single-stipe growth that dies back through winter, and that kelp is the kelp forest biome here. The canopy is thinner than before the 2014 to 2019 collapse.

Scuba, freediving, and sea kayaking are the working dive-side uses, with shore fishing from the rocks. The reef was a headline recreational abalone site through the 2010s, but that fishery has been closed statewide since 2018.

Parking is the paved lot at the boat landing, with fees set by the private operator. A per-person day-use fee applies to anyone not launching a boat, and the hoist carries its own tariff. Kayaks pay the per-person rate; they are not counted as boats for the hoist fee.

Fishing and spearfishing are legal here under standard California regulations. The site sits between the Salt Point SMCA to the north and the Russian River SMCA to the south and inside neither.