106 



CAPE COD GEOLOGY 



Haulover Break, so-called because whaling ships were once taken over it 

 into the inner harbor, was surveyed in 1846 by Henry Mitchell, of the United 

 States Coast Survey, and in 1872 by Henry L. Whiting. Between these years 

 the main inner stretch of the beach had remained essentially unchanged; even 

 "the lines and details of sand hills" that were not exposed to the action of the 

 waves showed no change. Whiting x found, however, that between these years 

 the shore line outside of the beach had been driven back about 100 feet. The 

 shore line within the bay at this place had remained about as it was in 1846. 

 Haulover Break was again surveyed by Henry L. Marindin, 2 of the Coast and 

 Geodetic Survey, in 1890, when the outer face of the beach was 160 feet inside 

 the line of 1874, showing a loss at the rate of 10 feet a year; but Marindin notes 

 that the average loss since 1846 had been at the rate of 6| feet a year. Up to 

 1890 there is no record that the sea breached Haulover Break, though F. P. 

 Gulliver 3 states that he had heard of an old map which shows an opening there. 

 According to Gulliver the sea began to break over the beach in storms somewhat 

 before 1896, and on December 17, 1896, it broke through and maintained a 

 shifting passage until about 1900. 4 In 1916 the ocean side of the former gap was 

 filled by a narrow strip of beach, and on the bay side a sand spit had been built 

 out from the south and nearly enclosed a small oval inlet. 



The beach from Sankaty Head southward appears to have been built out 

 mainly since the survey of 1846, when the apron of sand east of Tom Nevers 

 Head extended farther out than it did at the time of Marindin's resurvey in 1890. 

 West of the stretch between Forked Pond and Surfside the coast for a consider- 

 able distance receded about 389 feet between 1846 and 1890, entailing, according 

 to Marindin, a loss of 165 acres of land in 44 years. This loss was still going on 

 in 1916, when the site of the Surfside Hotel was being consumed by the waves. 

 Miacomet Rip, at the west end of this retreating segment of the coast line, pre- 

 sented a concave front to the sea in 1846; in 1916 a rounded sand foreland there 

 projected several hundred feet into the sea. 



Greater changes have taken place in the position of the long beach known as 

 Smith Point, at the extreme west end of Nantucket (Plate 9). The earliest 

 traditions of the island indicate that this point was the landing place of Indians 



1 Whiting, Henry L., Massachusetts Harbor Commissioners' Seventh Annual Report, January 1873, 

 House No. 65, pp. 109-111. 



2 Marindin, Henry L., On the changes in the ocean shore lines of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, 

 from a comparison of the surveys made in the years 1846 to 1887 and 1891. Plate 25 gives details of 

 surveys of Haulover Break. 



3 Gulliver, F. P., Nantucket shorelines, Bull. Geol. Soc. America, 15, p. 510 (footnote), 1904. 



4 Gulliver, op. cit., pp. 511-513, and pi. 50. Also Ann. Rept. Chief of Engineers for 1903, p. 90. 



