Newbury Town Library

Plum Island, 4,000 years on a barrier beach, William Sargent

eng

no index present

non fiction

Plum Island

William Sargent

4,000 years on a barrier beach

On March 10, 2013, 39 houses were washed away or declared to be in imminent danger from erosion on Plum Island Beach in northern Massachusetts. But it was only the latest skirmish in an ongoing battle between man and nature on this fragile barrier beach. Plum Island takes readers to the core of the earth to see how Plum Island's sands were first formed in the metamorphic forge of the earth's interior. It will follow these minerals as they erode off the sides of New Hampshire's Ice Age Mountains and wash down the proto-Merrimack River to form Plum Island. It will chronicle the lives of the Wooly Mammoth, Paleo-Indians, fishermen, farmers, sand miners and rum runners who made a good but hard living on this rugged island in the past and the homeowners, lawyers and scientists who are locked in present battles about its future

Acknowledgements; Fact and Fiction; The Blizzards of 2015; Garnet, Mica, Quartz, and all that other Schist.; The Glacier; The Matriarch; The Sand; "Rips and Runnels"; The Marsh; The Match; Captain John Smith; "The New England Prospect"; Wicked Walis; The Ladies of Grape Island; The Storm; Wits and Water; The Pest House; "Never Trust a Privateer"; The Timber Ship; The Bridge; "The Pocahontas"; Parting the Waters/Moses Pettingill; To Move a Lighthouse; The Mystery of the Missing Matriarch; Island Resort; The Jetties; The Wreck; The Gunners; Rum Runners; Rachel Carson; The Sea Haven Polio Camp; The Groins; The Paper; Sewer Lines on the Seashore; Geri's Loss; The Storm; The Pacific Legal Foundation; Academic Politics; The President's Day Blizzard; You Can't Sue the Atlantic Ocean; The Seawall Returns; North Jetty; The Matriarch's Message; The Last Folly?; A Golden Opportunity