This Richmond, Calif. beach is almost entirely covered in shards of porcelain dinner plates

RICHMOND, Calif. -- At Point Isabel in Richmond, there's a beach almost entirely covered in shards of porcelain dinnerware. But where did it come from?

"Someone in passing said, 'Have you ever been to TEPCO Beach?" said Lynn Maack, an avid TEPCO collector. "And I said no. So, we came here."

Dave Weinstein, president of the El Cerrito Historical Society, has come to know the origin story of TEPCO Beach quite well.

"TEPCO Beach, as we call it, has shards of beautiful old porcelain and pottery that were made by the Technical Porcelain and Chinaware Company," he says.

TEPCO was founded in 1918 by John Battista Pagliero. The original factory was located in Albany and then moved to El Cerrito in 1930. According to Maack, at its peak, TEPCO factories churned out 30,000 pieces every day.

"Plates, cups, saucers, all kinds of dinnerware. It was 'diner' ware, actually, which is very thick."

Weinstein added, "Hotels, places in Reno, San Francisco, many of the local places, they all got special 'TEPCO ware.'"

The factory in El Cerrito would eventually close in 1968 after Pagliero's death. But the memory of TEPCO can be found all throughout Point Isabel, even beyond its watery shores.

"Santa Fe land wanted to build a giant industrial place out here," recalls Weinstein, "so they encouraged all kinds of people to come and dump whatever they could to make land."

According to Weinstein, TEPCO did their part, dumping their imperfect dinnerware all over Point Isabel.

"If you walk throughout Point Isabel," said Weinstein, "you'll find a lot of this stuff buried in the dirt."

"There's going to be breakage, there's going to be misfirings of some kind, bad glazings," Lynn Maack added. "Those things aren't marketable, and they just get tossed."

According to Weinstein, people who grew up in the area during the 40's, 50's, and 60's would go play in the large piles of broken and discarded dinnerware outside of the factory walls.

After production of TEPCO dinnerware ceased, popularity of the items grew, and they turned into collectibles.

"My late wife, Sandi, and I started a TEPCO collector's club about 20 or 30 years ago," said Maack. "As we were collecting, the prices kept going up. It became more and more known and more collectible."

Perhaps because of the rare nature of these items, Maack and Weinstein have noticed a significant change to the shores of TEPCO beach.

"Over the years I've noticed how the available shards are fewer and farther in between," said Maack. "Even though it looks like there's nothing but shards here, (before) you could walk here and never touch a grain of sand."

"People over the years have come and taken a lot of it, but they should not," adds Weinstein. "These are archeological fragments that should remain here."

So make your way to Point Isabel in Richmond if you want to find TEPCO beach, just be sure to leave the dinnerware where you found it.