For years, residents of a Southern California beach town could walk a mile along a stretch of cream-colored sand while ocean waves lapped at their feet. That journey has now been cut short.
San Clemente, recognized for nearly a century as a "Spanish village by the sea," is losing its shoreline to erosion. Rising seas and crashing waves have bisected the city's picturesque North Beach, while eroding bluffs threaten waterfront homes and have repeatedly forced the closure of a passenger train route considered the second busiest in the country.
