The wet area beneath the bridge is a slough filled with water during the high tides and rainy periods. During the gold rush, this was the west branch of the Taiya River. In the last ice age, this valley was covered by a glacier over 4,000 feet thick. One major effect the former ice mass has on the area today is known as isostatic or glacial rebound. The land is rising or rebounding in response to the removal of the weight of the glacier. The rate of this rebound, measuring 0.75 inches a year, is astonishingly rapid for geological processes. This means the valley floor is 8 feet higher than it was 100 years ago, which translates to thousands of feed added to the coastline, given the shallowness of the Taiya Inlet.
