CAPE COD GEOLOGY 



107 



coming from Marthas Vineyard. Late in the eighteenth century the inhabitants 

 of Nantucket drove their young cattle in the spring along this beach at low tide 

 to Tuckernuck Island. 1 On a map of Massachusetts compiled "from the best 

 authorities" by J. Denison, published sometime before 1795, a long bar is shown 

 extending from Nantucket westward along the south side of Tuckernuck Island 

 and to the west of it. A slight break is shown in the bar near its junction with 

 Nantucket. 2 On another small-scale map, engraved for the New Encyclopedia by 

 L. Low, New York, and dated 1799, the bar that now ends in Smith Point is 

 shown extending somewhat beyond the west side of Tuckernuck to a point nearly 

 south of what appears to be the Gravelly Islands. The bar must then have lain 

 considerably farther south than it lay in the middle of the nineteenth century. 

 Accurate mapping of the beach began with the survey of 1846. From that time 

 the position of Smith Point and of the beach of which it is the west end is given 

 by Marindin, who describes the changes it has undergone as follows. 3 



This point is most erratic in position. In 1846 it was situated at the end of a long and 

 narrow sandy beach, almost directly west of the island of Tuckernuck. Ten years later, in 

 1856, the point was about 1 mile to the eastward, and in 1887 the point to which the name of 

 Smiths was applied was found to the southwest of Tuckernuck Island, 3| miles east of its 

 position in 1846. These remarkable changes are exhibited in illustration No. 27, which 

 shows the position in 1846, 1856, 1887 and 1891. 



In 1846 the south shore extended westward past the island of Tuckernuck, leaving a 

 waterway 250 metres wide between it and the island. In 1856 this waterway remained about 

 the same, but between 1856 and 1887 the storms wrought a great change in this locality. 

 The beach, which was a part of Nantucket Island and which protected the south shore of 

 Tuckernuck Island, had been beaten back on the island, filling up the water space existing in 

 1856. A new inlet had also broken through this beach at a point southeast from Tuckernuck, 

 which remained open at the last survey in 1891. The survey of 1891 shows an extension of old 

 Smiths Point beach to the westward as far as Muskeget Island since 1864, but under what 

 condition this growth took place has not been ascertained and may not be. 



Marindin found that the annual loss of land on the south coast of Nantucket 

 for 45 years between 1846 and 1891 was 9 acres, and that the coast recedes 

 more rapidly in the stretch toward the west than in that toward the east because 

 of the protection given to the east end of the island by the Nantucket shoals. 



Great Point, the northeastern extremity of the island of Nantucket, is a 

 large hook formed by the cutting back of the east coast of the island and the 



1 St. John, J. Hector (Crevecoeur), Letters from an American Farmer, p. 106, Philadelphia, March 4, 

 1893. There is a London edition (8 vo.), 1782, and another (8 vo.), 1873. 



2 The name of the town is given on this map as Sherburne. It was changed to Nantucket in 1795. 

 See Edward K. Godfrey, The Island of Nantucket, p. 284, Boston, 1882. 



3 Marindin Henry L., On the changes in the ocean shore lines of Nantucket Island, U. S. Coast and 

 Geodetic Survey Rept. for 1892, Appendix No. 6, p. 247, plate No. 27, reproduced here. 



