The turnout at Red Rock Spring, just south of Stinson Beach, is packed with 40 or more cars on sunny summer afternoons. Though the trail to beach below, once proclaimed by the Light as the “friendliest nude beach on the North Coast,” begins here, the bigger attraction is the fresh water tumbling from copper pipes across the road.
People gather to fill plastic barrels—some call it water harvesting—while children play in the reeds. Talismans and tiny statues line the area, and an imported Italian brick oven in the back of Matter Daddy Pizza’s food truck serves pies on weekends.
Social media and a recent New York Times article have brought Red Rock Springs a surge of popularity. But the spring has long been a gathering point for “raw water” veterans, newly recruited believers and curious tourists, all interested in the health benefits of untreated water.
Red Rock Spring may be the most accessible public spring in the Bay Area. Originally featuring a trickling waterfall that pooled in the pullout, the site now draws people to three copper pipes installed in recent years by Caltrans as part of maintenance work on Highway 1.
The spring is fed as rainy conditions bring groundwater near the surface, said Andrew Fisher, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The water emerges as the ground elevation drops to meet the groundwater level at the cliffs.
The rocks that harbor the spring are part of a geologic formation unique to coastal California called the Franciscan Complex, mostly made up of sandstone, chert and serpentine.
The Franciscan Complex is not a good natural aquifer, Mr. Fisher said. The rock is not permeated by water, meaning the water from Red Rock Springs is likely collected in a pocket or fracture caused by faults. It “relatively recently fell as rain,” he said.
The spring has never been tested by an official testing agency. Though independent tests show few health risks, water health experts caution that spring water must be consistently tested to be proven safe. The water likely originates from within Mount Tamalpais State Park, but the Red Rock pullout is within Caltrans’s jurisdiction. Neither entity would comment on the safety of consuming the spring water.
The lack of jurisdictional oversight doesn’t deter the crowd of water harvesters; in fact, it is probably seen as a boon.
“You never know how the government is controlling our water,” said a man filling 10 waist-high jugs on a recent weekend afternoon. He has been bringing Red Rock water back to his community of natural water enthusiasts in East Oakland for 10 years. They drink it, cook with it and garden with it.
An Oakland couple who has been coming to the springs for five years described hosting 200-person parties where they serve and celebrate Red Rock water. Two older women who were newer to harvesting learned about the springs from friends in natural-health circles.
Spring-goers cite the water’s difference from tap water in taste, hydration and energy. Michelle Veneziano, an osteopathic physician in Forest Knolls, would agree.
“Water coming out of Red Rock Springs is more alive,” she said. “It has a texture and a taste difference.”
But that’s not all. Untreated water is more “biologically compatible” with the body’s hydration systems, Dr. Veneziano said. And “naturally flowing water is an electron donor,” which allows for easier osmosis through human cell walls, she explained.
“The key word is coherence,” she added. “Artificial processes create incoherence. Getting water from unadulterated natural sources creates coherence.”
Perhaps the biggest sign of the spring’s expanding fanbase is the arrival this summer of Matter Daddy Pizza’s food truck. Owner Daniel McGillicuddy, son of Edmond McGillicuddy, who ran the old Ed’s Superette in Stinson Beach, said it’s not the spring itself that attracts him.
“There’s always a crowd here,” said Michael, the head chef at the truck. With the turnout’s ocean view, cool breeze and brilliant sun, “it doesn’t get much better than this,” he said.