Ashdod Travelers guide

17 Geographic, Topographical and Architectural structure The remains visible today on the site date back to the early Arab period in the land of Israel. The remains of the harbor built in the Philistine period (Tel Mor) were discovered on the banks of the Lachish stream. The port of Ashdod was built on the northern bank of the stream, which is unique by the fact it was not dug in the bay itself, but was built for about a kilometer into the sea, using breakwaters for a combined length of about three kilometers.1 The city of Ashdod was built on sand dunes and sandstone ridges, the type of terrain typical of the coastal plain. Until the 1940s the coastal plain was covered with shifting sands, preserved partly thanks to the Arab villages (the largest of which was the village of Isdud , next to Tel Ashdod), whose inhabitants herded sheep and cattle in the area thereby preventing vegetation from taking root in the sands. At the beginning of the twentieth century, during the British Mandate, trees were planted on top of the hills parallel to the beach, in order to stop the sands from shifting. To the south of the Ad Halom junction one can see, for example, the grove , planted by the British with the aim of preventing the sands from shifting to the nearby railway track. The accelerated development of the city and its constant expansion over the years significantly reduced the sand areas in the region, and today the Ashdod Sands park is essentially the last remnant of the Ashdod sands in particular and the impressive sand dunes of the coastal plain in general. There are unique types of plants in the park, including the White Acacia tree - a remnant of the vegetation that once covered the area - and the park serves as a home to a variety of animal species. And still, the existing sand areas constitute one of the reasons the number of the open areas in the city is the highest among the big cities. The wind regiment in the area led to the fact that Ashdod's sandy beaches are flat and broad, more than any other city on the coastal plain. The wind's direction was even taken into account when the city was built, in order to reduce the air pollution from the industrial plants as much as possible.