A couple of items of interest in this article from today's Boston Globe:
1 - the rising tide reveals the past:
"Last month, a 100-foot strip of peat marsh appeared in the surf off Nauset Beach on Cape Cod. The peat had the hoof prints of oxen and horses and was crisscrossed with wagon tracks that looked like they had been laid down yesterday, though they probably date to the 1700s when the marsh and barrier beach were 800 feet farther out to sea."
2 - the rising tide (due to global warming) is continuing to erode the Cape.
"According to Robert Oldale, a geologist with the US Geological Survey, Cape Cod will be almost gone in another 2,000 years at the present rate of sea-level rise. Most of the peninsula's highlands and bluffs will have washed away and its outer reaches will be 2 miles closer to the mainland."
2 - Haymarket Square was really a hay market:
"Before the advent of petroleum, having access to a salt marsh was like owning your own oil well. Hay fueled New England's local economies. It was fed to horses for transportation, to sheep for clothing, and to cattle for milk, meat and work. It was the salt hay marshes that convinced the Pilgrims to expand to Cape Cod in the 1600s, and, by the 1700s, Cape Cod and North Shore farmers were shipping hay to Boston to be sold to urbanites in Haymarket Square."
A good day for me is learning something I did not know before.
Did you learn something today?
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