Travel Guide Capbreton

Long before the jetty lighthouse was built in 1948, the church of Saint-Nicolas, with its tall square tower leaning against the bell tower, served as a landmark for sailors. In the Middle Ages, Capbretonnais harpooned whales in the Bay of Biscay and pursued them to Newfoundland. A Capbreton sailor, Cabarrus, is said to have led the first ship to land in America long before Christopher Columbus, and to have named the island Capbreton. The island is said to bear the oldest European name in American geography. Henri IV, King of Navarre, visited the resort several times, as attested by one of his letters, kept at the town hall. When Napoleon III realized the difficulty of landing, he created the pier. If the Capbretonnais have always had a seafaring vocation, it's because the site is a natural port of refuge. Just a few hundred meters from the shore, between the pier and Hossegor's northern beach, lies a geological curiosity: a 270-kilometer-long underwater canyon. Known as the "Gouf" or "fosse" of Capbreton, it reaches a depth of 4,000 meters and is linked to a major network of tectonic marine faults. The Gouf is thought to have played a role in attracting rivers, as evidenced by the mouth of the Adour at Capbreton. It also has the property of reducing wave movement at the surface, which explains the calming of the waves in this area, which is a rest area for boats in difficulty. The town is the only port in the Landes region to offer some 1,000 berths for yachtsmen and fishermen.