Quick answer
Bodega Bay is a fishing village on the Sonoma coast where Alfred Hitchcock filmed The Birds, released in 1963. It is also the site where PG&E abandoned a nuclear power plant in 1964 after citizen protests and a seismic fault were found; the flooded excavation, the Hole in the Head, remains on Bodega Head.
Full transcript
The Birds and the Bay
Alfred Hitchcock chose Bodega Bay for The Birds in 1961, and the film's release in 1963 put this harbor on the map. The restaurant scenes and the boat dock were shot at Tides Wharf, still the working heart of the town. The famous schoolhouse is not here at all — it is five miles inland in the village of Bodega. And across the water on Bodega Head, the abandoned ranch house that stood in for the Brenner family home belonged to the same family that would soon face down the biggest thing ever proposed for this coast.
The Hole in the Head
PG&E wanted to build a nuclear power plant on Bodega Head in the early 1960s, the nation's first commercially viable one, and bought land from rancher Rose Gaffney, who did not want to sell. While crews dug the foundation, a seismic fault showed up in the rock, and a citizens' campaign led by the Sierra Club made the project the first great environmental fight over nuclear power. In 1964 PG&E gave up. The flooded foundation pit is still there, called the Hole in the Head, and the head itself sits on a fault that moved twelve feet in the 1906 earthquake.
What to Do
Walk out on Bodega Head, past the marine laboratory, to the cliff edge where the granite drops into the open Pacific; the fenced excavation of the abandoned power plant sits on the way. Drive back around the harbor to Doran Beach, the long spit that holds the bay's calm water. Finish where the film did: stand at the end of the Tides Wharf pier, gulls lined up on the railings — the original cast of The Birds, still waiting for their scene.