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Research dossier · Places & Architecture

Glass Beach (ʻEleʻele, Hawaii)

beach in Kauai County, United States

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ5567030 ↗
Source-derived summary

Glass Beach is a beach in ʻEleʻele, an industrial area in Kauai, Hawaii, that is made of sea glass. It is in Hanapepe Bay, near Port Allen Harbor. The beach's regular rock is basalt, but the sea glass formed after years of discarded glass.

See also

There are similar beaches in Fort Bragg and Benicia, California.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Glass Beach (ʻEleʻele, Hawaii)” is beach in Kauai County, United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Glass, Beach and ʻEleʻele, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA strong orientation record where physical form, institutional use and historical geography need to be read together. The current 56-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Glass, Beach and ʻEleʻele is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “beach in Kauai County, United States” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5567030. Authority coordinates are 21.898, -159.584. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Glass Beach (ʻEleʻele, Hawaii)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Glass Beach (ʻEleʻele, Hawaii) primary sources, Glass Beach (ʻEleʻele, Hawaii) archive and Glass research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Glass Beach (ʻEleʻele, Hawaii)”?
  2. What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
  3. Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Glass Beach (ʻEleʻele, Hawaii)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.