Figure 96. 



Overlay of Champlain's 1605 map and a 1964 topographic map ot 

 Nauset Harbor. 



By the end of the 18th century, the Nauset Harbor area was very different 

 from either 1605 or 1977. Des Barre (1764), a mapmaker for the Foyal British 

 Navy, produced a detailed map of the Nauset Spit system (Fig. 97), which 

 showed both a change in orientation of the barrier and a change in the phys- 

 iographic features from 1605. In 1764 Nauset Spit-Eastham was dissected 

 into many small sections that are shown as irregular forms on the map in the 

 appropriate location for a dune line. A close inspection of the shading 

 notation used by Des Barre shows that these breaches were breaks in the dune 

 line (washovers) , rather than inlets which experienced tidal exchange. Seis- 

 mic data collected along Nauset Spit-Eastham north of the present inlet 

 (D. Aubrey, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, personal communication, 1980) 

 and the presence of almost continuous salt-marsh peat beneath the dune line 

 indicate that an inlet has not existed north of the present inlet within the 

 recent past. These irregular features on Des Barre' s map were dunes, while 

 the shading between and westward of the dunes undoubtedly represented wash- 

 overs. Nauset Spit either recently overwashed in 1764 and was very similar 

 to its physiographic appearance in 1978 (i.e., remnant dunes) or the spit had 

 overwashed many years earlier and these features represented new dunes forming 

 on washovers . 



Des Barre' s map shows a large salt marsh in the center of Nauset in 

 approximately the same position as the present marsh. Also, the main channel 

 into Nauset Harbor curves to the south as it does today, very close to Nauset 

 Heights. Nauset Spit-Orleans is present on the 1764 map, but is much shorter 

 than noted in 1605. 



157 



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