Charting Coastal History, Map by Map
MAPS
Cape Cod Times
Darlene M. Darcy
Boston University Washington News Service
November 29, 2007
WASHINGTON – For 200 years the Office of Coast Survey, the country’s oldest scientific organization, has mapped and charted the landscape of the nation’s shoreline to ensure safe maritime travel and trade. But as time has altered the land, old maps and charts have quietly slipped into antiquity, forgotten – until now.
Volumes of centuries-old maps and charts lay tucked away on the shelves of a Coast Survey warehouse, only recovered in the last decade when Curtis Loy, once chief geographer at the Coast Survey, was told that the warehouse was closing.
Loy found “far in excess of 30,000” historical documents in the Riverdale, Md., warehouse. “I was astounded,” he said. After being scanned and posted online the original maps were sent to the Library of Congress or National Archives. More than 20,000 of them are accessible at the Coast Survey Web site, http://historicals.ncd.noaa.gov/historicals/histmap.asp, for viewing and free downloading.
While the Coast Survey initially decided to construct the online collection as a record of mapping and charting techniques over two centuries, each image also has artistic and historical merit. Preserving these records is “the essence of what recording American history is all about,” said William Stanley, president of the Washington Map Society and former chief historian of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The collection, which dates back to1655, contains more than 800 renderings of the Massachusetts shoreline. Hundreds of them depict Cape Cod’s coast and waterways: from a 1791 nautical chart of Nantucket Shoals that predates the agency’s 1807 establishment to a map of the Bass River Harbor as it met the Atlantic in 1878.
An 1882 rendering of “Wood’s Holl,” as it then was called, illustrates the area from the northeast point of Naushon Island to Quissett Harbor. Dotted every few inches with measures of depth, latitude and longitude, and buoy markers, the map also details houses and a blacksmith’s shop along Bar Neck Wharf at Great Harbor. Sailing directions beside the map’s legend would guide seamen through the “Holl’s” channels into Buzzard’s Bay:
When off the harbor in 6 fathoms, bring to bear N ¼ W (N 12” 30’W.) a Yellow House at the head of the harbor (it is the Westernmost house on Bar Neck, has wings and is a story and a half high). Steer for it until Bar Neck Wharf bears E. N.E., then anchor of steer NW (N 56’W) for the inner harbor, anchoring in from 4 to 8 fathoms. The buoys mark clearly the limits of the channel…To pass through Wood’s Holl into Buzzards Bay When the Largest House on the high land on Parker’s Neck bears E. t, N. steer W ¼ S.(W.12”30’S) Between Red Buoy No 4 and Black Buoy No 3 When the Bay is broad open steer N by W. ½ W (N25’W.)
These historical maps provide perspective, implications about the life of place, its people and how it has changed. When Stanley picks up a map, “not only am I holding a piece of history in my hands,” he said, “but I’m seeing what people who held it then saw with their own eyes – there is so much more there if you stop and really look.”
Still, such historical data has contemporary relevance. Today, centuries-old maps are used in coastal studies on Cape Cod and all along U.S. shores.
Coastal researcher Mark Adams, a geographic information systems specialist at the Cape Cod National Seashore, combines new observations with data from old maps and charts, he said, justifying new research studies, revealing unknown histories, restoring and preserving natural systems or projecting how a future map might look.
Adams is a technical assistant in the Marindin Project, a resurvey of the coast led by Dr. Graham Giese from the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies. The original coastal survey of Cape Cod’s shoreline was conducted by Henri Marindin, a Swiss cartographer, in the late 1800s.
Much of Marindin’s original survey, Adams said, was a likely source for many maps and charts of Cape Cod that are part of the Coast Survey’s digital, historical collection. But Marindin’s real objective was to create a benchmark study that would enable later comparative research and a long-term understanding of coastal change.
That is just what his work has become. When the current survey is complete, there will be a 120-year record of coastal change along Cape Cod, telling stories about how systems and habitats once functioned and how best to restore them to their most efficient, natural state.
For its practical application in numerous preservation efforts, “Marindin’s surveys were a gift to subsequent generations,” Adams said.
Adams, Stanley and administrators at the Office of Coast Survey said they hope better access to such maps will fascinate and educate the public, providing a better understanding of the nation’s coastal landscapes, past and present.
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