In the heart of North America lie the remnants of an ancient sea that once linked the Gulf of Mexico with the Arctic Ocean. Now known as the Western Interior Seaway, its shorelines shifted for countless ages until receding for the last time around sixty million years ago.

What remains are the ghostly traces of this liquid history. Fossils of sea creatures and carbon-rich layers of rock whisper their stories on the unbroken winds. In broad terms, this sea created the Great Plains of North America.

This is the American Ghost Coast

The Ghost Coast also alludes to the depopulation of the Great Plains over the past century. While the modern form of this phenomenon holds nuance, it has created a view held by some on America’s Important Coasts that the Middle of America is a dying, barren wasteland. A place fit only for repopulating buffalo herds and best seen from 30,000 feet in the air, if ever.

Millions of people still live in this part of America. And we’ll be here, outcasts of the wasteland, holding the center, surfing the Ghost Coast.