USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Nahant > Some annals of Nahant, Massachusetts > Part 18
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From Stony Beach and the Ocean Street end of Marginal Road the shore is mostly ledges around to Short Beach. Among these, at the foot of High Street, although the street is
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not yet built down to the water's edge, is John's Peril. Here the cliff is high, and years ago John Breed, with a cart and oxen, essayed the steep rise above the ledges. Losing control the outfit backed perilously near the edge, when Breed suc- ceeded in freeing his team, and the cart went over alone; hence the name, John's Peril. Short Beach is a slowly shelving beach exposing a wide space of clean hard sand at low tide. Near the middle of it, abreast of the junction of Castle Road and Nahant Road, is the Nahant Coast Guard Station, built in 1898, and late in 1926 made a radio station for its own service. Short Beach is a beautiful beach and was much used by Nahant people until within a few years, when it be- came the resort of picnickers and auto maniacs, and is now intolerable for other people. It is the property of the State of Massachusetts, through the Metropolitan District Commis- sion, which assumed its control in 1905. The visitors for the day do as other trippers do in leaving rubbish about. Besides this they have no conveniences of any kind and are quite primitive in their doings, with ways that are their own but not other peoples. If the picnicker is the forest's prime evil, so also is he the despoiler of the beach. Some one is to blame for an unsatisfactory condition, for proper installations should be made and suitable regulations enforced, or these people who come to Short Beach in large numbers should be moved up near the State Bath House on the Lynn end of Long Beach, where conditions are suitable, and where a force of men attempts a pick-up campaign, so that the beach thereabouts will not too much resemble a stoutly contested battleground of the late war. The present condition at Short Beach is disagreeable for Nahant, unhealthy and unsatisfactory for the users, and un- worthy of the State. The users are from out of town. Nahant no longer can use its most beautiful beach. Those who do, either make the best of bad conditions or do not know what the beach might be. Fortunately old ocean comes pounding in twice daily and does her share of housecleaning, taking care of her silver strand as far up as high-water mark.
Little Nahant is described by Lewis in his "Picture of
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Nahant," published in 1845, as follows: "Little Nahant is one hundred and forty rods long and seventy broad, containing forty acres. It is a hill consisting of two graceful elevations rising eighty feet above the sea, and defended by great battle- ments of rock, from twenty to sixty feet in height. On the southerly side are two deep gorges, called the Great and Little Furnace. Between them is Mary's Grotto, a spacious room twenty-four feet square and twenty in height, opening into the sea." It lies wholly to one side, easterly, of the main road over the beaches. Apparently a road, at first a cart path, con- nected it with Great Nahant since early days. Traffic over the sand beach, dependent upon tides, was from Little Nahant toward Lynn.
Long Beach is the greatest beach of Nahant, stretching for two miles or more of beauty. Here are trippers also, but the State, with its bathhouse at one end of this stretch of sand, does better with cleanliness. On the Lynn Harbor side the shore is mostly mud flats, with a bit of sand or pebble a part of the way, from the Lynn line down by Little Nahant as far as Castle Road. Boots that shed water are needed if one would explore very much. It is a pleasant area to look out upon. The flats are maligned a little in calling them mud flats, for they are clean looking and far from disagreeable.
These beaches seem to have been attractive as income pro- ducers, but fortunately they were always kept open and free from the peculiar growth of buildings which so often infects a beach resort. At the annual town meeting in March, 1870, it was voted to lease land on Long and Short Beaches at the discretion of the selectmen. Then in April, 1879, it was voted to lease land on Long Beach near Sand Point for a coal and wood wharf. Sand Point is on the harbor side just beyond the "Causeway" or wall towards Lynn from Little Nahant. This proposition was from Welcome J. Johnson, who was then in this business on Nahant. He was a son of C. Hervey Johnson. He proposed that the town sell Sand Point for this business. Nothing ever came of the consent to lease.
Turning with Castle Road toward Bass Point the cliffs
John Q. Hammond School Committee
Welcome W. Johnson Town Treasurer
1
William F. Waters Town Clerk
Fred A. Wilson Public Library Trustee
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begin again at Black Rock. Beyond this is another beach, beautiful like the others, which used to be called Johnson's Beach. The name should be continued, for it is a reminder of the Johnson who built the hotel near there about a century and a quarter ago. West Cliff separates this from what was known as Reed Cove, abreast of the Relay House property. Then comes Bass Point, a rugged rocky point projecting a few hundred yards into the ocean. Easterly from this is Lewis Beach, and other coves and cliffs break the shore line to Bailey's Hill. This hill, a real hill, projects its entire bulk into the water, and is surrounded by cliffs and ledges against which great seas lash out in fury when tossed shoreward by storm and gale. Around from Bailey's Hill is Pond Beach, named because adjacent to Bear Pond. Bear Pond got its name from the bear episode mentioned elsewhere. Then comes another and smaller point, and Dorothy's Cove is met again and the circuit of the shores of the town is completed. Naturally all Nahant is a beauty spot. Some parts are hurt in community beauty by houses too closely set together, and some houses and other buildings are not things of beauty or joys forever. But this is true of almost every community. As a whole, Nahant remains a healthy, attractive country town, with comparatively few of the accompaniments that make a suburb ugly or otherwise un- desirable. Still, there are those who like suburban districts. In these days, when content comes f. o. b. Detroit and a home is a sleeping place adjacent to a garage, it may not matter to people where they live.
The highest part of the main road of the town is the short piece where Ocean Street crosses it and for a few yards either side. The highest point on Nahant may be noted by a huge boulder in a field near Highland Road. An area of several acres in that vicinity appears to be of about the same level. But five feet or so marks the differences between several points on Nahant, such as at East Point, Bailey's Hill, Fox Hill, the summit at Little Nahant, or the hill above the cemetery. The elevation formerly called Cannon Hill is in the same class. It is the vicinity of the Moering estate, above
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the standpipe. Many of these old place names seem to have an origin past discovery. A search in vain has been made for Joseph's Beach and Bailey's Hill, for example, yet some one reading these lines may know all about it and wonder at the ignorance of others. These annals are prepared with the assistance and co-operation of many people, yet some one not approached may be the very one able to answer interesting questions.
Bear Pond has been filled in at the easterly end by its use as a town dump. Forty years ago it extended up to the junction of Pond Street and Willow Road. The water of the pond is brackish, by infiltration from the ocean, but freezes over for good skating, although open to winds which often make rough ice. There is a large spring over against the bank of the knoll on the southerly side, a vigorous spring of good drinking water and flowing so freely that it does not freeze over. It is within the pond, but flows sufficiently to remain fresh with brackish water all around it. On marshy ground near by grow cat tail and other wet ground wild plants.
It was always easy to find water on Nahant by digging wells. The South Field, across Nahant Road from the Nahant Club grounds, was called springy ground, with water near the surface. Likewise the field above the telephone station. Just below this, nearly across Spring Road from Charles F. Leavitt's house, was a shallow well, half in the road and half in the bank, stoned up six feet or more above the road level. This was almost an open spring. It is referred to in the town records, in connection with the laying out of Valley Road in 1865, as "the stone reservoir." Many people have believed this was "Calf Spring" of old mention, back to 1706, but this is not so. Probably Tudor built this well, and it fed a public watering trough fifty yards below and across the street. In 1883 Joseph T. Wilson built a well on his new place farther down the hill, and this new well interfered with the "stone reservoir" which afterwards ran nearly dry in dry times. Public water supply to the trough ended the usefulness of this old well and shortly it was filled in. Calf Spring was always an open
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spring, and is mentioned elsewhere, a hundred feet or less southerly from Spring Road.
About a mile off Nahant, northerly from Saunder's Ledge, is "Egg Rock," called in earliest times "Birds Egg Rock" because of sea birds nesting there. It is eighty feet or more in height and of about three acres area, with about an acre of arable soil, part of which, perhaps, was boated over there by Thomas Dexter as one of his schemes. In June, 1855, the town of Nahant voted to quitclaim this little island to the United States government for a lighthouse. On September 15, 1856, Egg Rock Light was first shown a white light, changed to red on June 15, 1857. It continued to burn red up to within a few years of its discontinuance, when it was changed to white again. The last night it burned was on April 17, 1922. The old lighthouse was rebuilt in 1897, a larger and more modern structure. To get to Egg Rock was rather difficult except in smooth water, but a framework landing bracketed out from the ledges was a later addition giving easier access. After the light was stopped the buildings were sold at auction, but an attempt to move one of them down to a scow for floating away was unsuccessful, and the house slid into the water and was not worth salvaging. Other buildings or remains stayed there until 1927. The State of Massachusetts took it over for use as a bird sanctuary, named after Senator Lodge, who looked out upon it for so many years, and in this latter year dynamited walls and the other works of man in order that the sea birds might not be disturbed by any suggestion not made by nature herself. Man has helped the world, apparently, but his help in Egg Rock's present destiny seems better when absent.
Several other lighthouses are seen from Nahant. "The Graves," a few miles southerly, is a comparatively new light of high power, started first on September 1, 1905. It is a double wink every five seconds. Farther easterly and farther away is Minot's Light, blinking its one-four-three every half minute. Minot's was originally a great iron frame structure with a house on top and was first regularly lighted on January 1,
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1850. On April 17, 1851, it was wrecked in a great storm. Then a new light tower was built of granite blocks dowelled and dovetailed together, and the light was started again regu- larly on November 15, 1860. Until 1894 it was a steady white light, and then it was changed to its present appearance. In the spring of the young man's fancy described by the poet it is said to wink "I love you." Still farther easterly may be seen the slower and less nervous blinking of Boston Lightship.
The Long Island Light in Boston Harbor is older, dating back to 1819, though rebuilt more than once. At first it was a stone house, then an iron structure, and about 1900 the present brick building was erected. Deer Island Light is a range light, not visible from the western half of Nahant. This was started about 1890.
Over northerly Nahant sees Thacher's Island Twin Lights, down Cape Ann way, and dating back to 1773. The original towers were forty-five feet high and were replaced by one hun- dred and twenty-four foot towers in 1861. The lights always shone as now.
Southerly is Boston Light, another important Boston Harbor guide, familiar to Nahanters as a white tower and a revolving light flashing every half minute. This was started in 1716 and was the first lighthouse built by any of the colonies in North America. It was supported for a time by a tax on shipping, and the year of its first lighting was an early date in lighthouse history. The Eddystone Light only ranks eighteen years earlier. In the Revolutionary War this structure fared badly. It was partly wrecked by Americans while the British occupied Boston and was blown up by the latter when they evacuated the city. In 1783 it was rebuilt and with various alterations is the present Boston Light. Apparently it was not shown for a time in the War of 1812. About 1811 it was changed from a fixed light to the revolving light familiar today. In 1719 a gun was placed at the light to "answer ship in a fog," and this cannon is still at the station. In 1851 a fog bell was installed, in 1872 a fog trumpet, and in 1887 the present steam siren. Comments here made about variations in any of
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these lights do not refer to their brilliancy. Improved methods have changed most of them in this respect.
The Graves Lighthouse also has a booming fog horn which warns mariners and wakes sleepers not accustomed to it. There is a bell buoy on Fawn Bar, a few miles toward Boston, which can be heard on Nahant when the wind brings the sound in that direction. Then there is "Old Sunk," or "The Spindle," with a spherical cage on a tall iron column. It looks small from shore, but is large enough for a man to climb into if he can also get up the shaft. "Old Sunk" is the only above- water ledge tip of a ridge continuing seaward from Bailey's Hill. Recently a red guide light was set up on Tudor Wharf. Nowadays harbor pilots land there, getting back to their stations or houses more quickly than if returning by water. This light is a small power red light and was started December 24, 1920. It should not be mentioned as in the lighthouse class. A few years ago a bell buoy was placed down near "Old Sunk," and for a few weeks its clangor, and the infernal irregularity of it, threatened to depopulate the town. Beseechings, for once, were not in vain, and the offending noise maker was removed.
The question of the ownership of the beaches of Nahant seems to have been a live matter from the beginning of the town. Among the first printed documents of the new town was one in 1856, entitled "Extracts from the Records of the Town of Lynn, together with the Division and Names of the Original Proprietors of Land at Nahant and Reports Thereon." This was the report of a committee of three appointed by the town "to make investigations in relation to the rights of the town in the undivided and unimproved lands within its cor- porate limits." The committee was Francis Johnson, Alonzo Colby and John Q. Hammond. Hammond was secretary and prepared the printed report for circulation. It is a careful piece of work and ably presents the town's claims. It was accepted by the town as a report of progress. The committee was continued and enlarged by the addition of the Board of Selectmen, and instructed to take such action as the interests
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of the town required. This report quotes the records by which the committee of 1706 was chosen by the town of Lynn, and gives the entire list of allotments as later recorded, also, on the Lewis and Hammond map. Then it describes the method of laying out the lots among the proprietors of Lynn, and continues as follows:
By the common law which we received from England, the sea- shore belonged to the Sovereign; but by an old Colony ordinance of 1641, it is declared that, "in all creeks, coves, and other places, about and upon salt water, where the sea ebbs and flows, the pro- prietors of the land adjoining shall have property to the low water mark, where the sea doth not ebb above an hundred rods, and not more, wheresoever it ebbs further."
By this ordinance, which has been adjusted to the law of the land, the beaches which surround the peninsula of Nahant became the property of the commoners of Lynn, and were subject to their dis- posal in such manner as they might elect, not inconsistent with the public rights of navigation, fishing, fowling and bathing. Now it becomes important to know whether the commoners of Lynn ever intended to convey their rights to private individuals, or whether they intended to divide the lands held in common, and retain their rights in the beaches. At the time of this division of the common lands, and for nearly a century afterwards, in every annual town warrant there was an article as follows, viz .: "to let the Nahant beaches," and in the records of the doings of these meetings these "beaches" were let to some one or more individuals, the town re- ceiving a consideration therefor; and in August of the same year of the division, stone were sold from the Nahant beaches by vote of the town. Also on March 3, 1711, "all of the shells that shall come upon the Nahant beaches for one year were sold to Daniel Brown and William Gray for thirty shillings," and at the same meeting, bits of land on which to set a house were granted to James Mills, Jona. Johnson, and two others. All of these facts, which are matters of record upon the town books of Lynn, show conclusively that the town still continued to assert complete control over the beaches, and to exercise all the rights of ownership of the same. That this was the intention of the town will still further appear by the action of the committee of division, for although the ordinance of the old Colony was at that time in force, which gave to the owners of the land adjoining, the shore to low water mark, yet they did not meas- ure to that point, and enter the same on the town book, which they must have done in order to give title to it. Neither did they make
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any allowance for such a privilege conferred upon some persons who would possess, on such a supposition, in some places nearly eight rods of shore. ... Upon this head tradition points to the same conclusion, for the range ways are claimed to be for the use of the proprietors, to go to the shore for sea manure, which, by the old Colony ordinance, they would have no right to, but, upon the sup- position that the shore belonged to the commoners, would be per- fectly proper and right.
It is still within the memory of many that the people of Lynn have claimed and exercised this right, to take seaweed from these beaches, and to prohibit all persons not residents of Lynn from exercising this right.
In the year 1807 several inhabitants of Danvers were prosecuted for taking sea manure from the beaches, contrary to a vote of the town, and the court in its decision sustained the town in its right to pass such a prohibitory vote, and left it in legal possession of all the natural treasures which the sea might cast upon its shores. Thus it appears to your committee, in the light of these facts, that to the town of Nahant as the successors of the commoners of Lynn, belongs the soil of the seashore, subject, however, to public rights under the general law, and rights acquired by custom, prescription and adverse possession.
Then follows a discussion of the ownership by the town of certain lots not granted to individuals in the 1706 division. The committee continued its work, evidently, and at the annual meeting in March, 1859, the following resolution was passed and is a part of the town records:
Whereas the ownership and fee of the beaches, shore and strand surrounding the town, and also of the ground over which the high- ways were laid out by the committee by which the division of the land in the town was made in the year 1706, are claimed as the prop- erty of the town, and whereas divers persons owning land abutting on said beaches, shore and strand, and others, have obstructed the access thereto by erecting fences or buildings thereon or otherwise, and have in like manner obstructed said highways, and, by con- tinuing such obstructions may possibly acquire rights adverse to those of the town and of the public;
Voted, That this town claims to be the owner in fee of the said beaches, shore and strand, and of the soil on which the said high- ways are laid out, subject always to the public rights of navigation, fishing, fowling and bathing thereon in such manner as may not
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be inconsistent with the laws and police regulations of the Common- wealth and this town :
That the town disputes and denies the right of any person or persons to the exclusive use of the said beaches, shore or strand, and the land over which the said highways are laid out or any part or parts thereof, or to any exclusive right of any air, light or other easement thereover, and also the right of any person or persons to exclude the public therefrom or from the use and enjoyment thereof for the purposes aforesaid, excepting those places in which the town or the selectmen thereof have granted or may hereafter grant any such exclusive right.
Then followed a vote to notify all owners abutting beaches of this action. It is not proposed to discuss the legal effect of these actions of the town, but they are interesting as showing a plain attempt to prevent the beaches from becoming private property. A former chairman of the selectmen, a competent lawyer, is said to have remarked that a look at what the town had done in these early days would cause some consternation. With the auto maniac abroad in the land, and with the whole eastern end of Massachusetts on wheels and headed for the seashore in hot weather, perhaps people willing to accept the care and responsibility of so-called private ownership are relieving the town of worry over rubbish and crowds.
At the March town meeting in 1874 it was voted to build a plank walk around Mifflin's Point to connect with the one built by George P. Upham. Since that time the town has maintained this plank path and its protecting guard rails or fences. It has been suggested that the town lay out a town footway the entire length of this path as it now runs, from Bass Beach around to Stony Beach at the northeastern end of Summer Street, and thus insure its remaining a public path such as it has been for so long a time. The path long antedates the building of the plank walk, and reaches back so far that no one can discover a time when it was not used by the public. There could therefore appear to be little question of damages to adjoining property, for it would suffer nothing new. Even the automobile traffic will not add to its use, apparently, for the auto maniac is not a walker and cannot get far from his motor car.
Model of Frederic Tudor's Ice Carrier, the "Ice King"
MANLY BAKER -
PERONELLY BAKERE
NAHANT STEAMER, NELLY BAKER.
Popular Nahant Steamboat of the Fifties
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The same comments are made about the path through to East Point, which has a curious history. In 1865, on a petition of residents, including some summer residents, a road one rod wide was laid out all around the shore at East Point. Damages were set and money appropriated for them, and the report of this laying out was duly accepted. At once arose a discussion as to the location and difficulties of building, which delayed construction so long that the legal time limit placed on it was exceeded and the laying out was to be done over again. John E. Lodge, who bought the whole of East Point after the great hotel had burned, died in 1862, but compromise overtures were made by his heirs, or their representatives, that the town did not really want a road around the point but only a footpath access to it. It was proposed to cede a right of way between the two parts of the estate, as it had been divided, together with an adequately long path around the cliffs. This arrange- ment seems to have pleased everybody and was accepted. It was some time later that it was discovered that the town, perhaps through the ignorance or thoughtlessness of both parties to the plan, had given up a permanent way for a way existing only at the will of the owners. The transaction does not seem to reflect credit on any one. A cure now, as for the path around Mifflin's Point, is to lay out a town footway, and again damages would appear to be simple, because no person has ever lived there without the existence of this public privi- lege, and the added suffering on account of it may be tolerable. Perhaps the owners would co-operate to continue what has existed since the point was used for private residences, or to correct what appears to have been an error in the original deal establishing this public footpath.
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