But I didn’t stop them. Didn’t stop a thing. Nope. Instead I sat there teary eyed watching them pave paradise and started taking notes to write a book about;
The Island of Magic!
****
Everything You’ve Always
Wanted To Know About
Mashnee Island’s History
I suppose the first thing you should know about Mashnee Island is that it’s real. Real place. Real people. Real history. Real deal. Or, perhaps you’ve been there, so you know. Or knew. Or know someone who knows. Point being, it’s still there. Of course nowadays the island homes are all privately owned, larger, newer, modern, and renovated, making for an increasingly exclusive community. Who’d have thunk it? Not me. Not my pals. I suppose islands are hard to come by. Nevertheless, it’s still Mashnee, and I assure you it’s earth and shores and sea and beaches and salt air and interesting history are perfectly genuine.
The second thing is:
Mashnee isn’t an island.
Well, not anymore.
Mashnee is now part of what’s officially called an isthmus. There, finally a chance to use that word. It means a “narrow stretch of land bordered on both sides by water, which connects two larger masses of land.” Ok, settled.
Mashnee was a true island, completely surrounded by water, until 1939, which is when the Coast Guard Department of Engineers finished construction of a one mile long causeway (the dike) connecting Mashnee Island to the mainland as part of a larger, more ambitious construction project.
Mashnee Island is an awe-inspiring place. It comprises roughly fifty acres, surrounded by water on three sides, and located a hard right turn, then four miles of winding roads from the Bourne Bridge. Its location is quite secluded.
The island overlooks the mouth of the Cape Cod Canal with Massachusetts Maritime Academy and the Cape Cod Railroad Bridge in clear sight to the north.
The Cape Cod Canal was originally financed by the wealthy banker, August Belmont Jr. and his Boston, New York, and Cape Cod Canal Company. Upon completion, the canal measured 100-feet wide, 15-feet deep and stretched for nearly eight miles. It officially opened on July 30, 1914. Belmont retained ownership of the canal until his death in 1924, after which the U.S. Senate recommended that the government purchase the canal.
Beginning in 1933, thanks to twenty-six million dollars from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” work began to dredge and widen the Cape Cod Canal. It was now intended to be 32-feet deep and 540-feet wide.
In the process of determining where four million cubic yards of newly dredged spoils should be deposited, a decision was made to form a man-made dike which could double as a vehicle causeway, linking Mashnee and Hog Islands to the mainland. A substantial part of Hog Island would need to be severed in the process, however.
What remained of Hog Island was then leased to Mashnee Village for a period of ninety-nine years, and for the first time ever, Mashnee Island was connected to the mainland and made accessible to bicycles as well as automotive vehicles.
In its earlier incarnation, historical records from the Plymouth Colony dating back to the 1600s indicate that Mashnee Island, Hog Island and Tobey Island had originally belonged to the Wampanoag tribe of Native Americans. They were also known as Manomets.
In 1627, in order to trade with both the Manomets and the Dutch, Pilgrims built the Aptucxet Trading Post. The Manomets of Mashnee Island traded essential food to the English settlers on the mainland, which is how the island of Mashnee came to be mentioned in the Plymouth Colony’s records.
Richard Bourne, a Christian minister from Sandwich, the oldest town on Cape Cod, befriended the Manomets while assuming the mantle of missionary. Bourne was well thought of and well connected. Because he continued to remain on good terms with the Manomets, the tribe granted Plymouth Colony the right to graze sheep on Mashnee Island.
One hundred heads of sheep were carefully transported to Mashnee by boat.
Since at that time Mashnee Island boasted grassy fields in abundance, it was assumed that sheep would thrive there. However, the island also had a large population of wolves. Bad match. In order to protect the sheep, shepherds would have to be stationed on the island to look after the flocks. Small huts, relying on large fireplaces for heat, were constructed on the island in order to house tribe members as well as shepherds.
The island was highly vulnerable to storms, and due to the strong winds which perennially whip across Mashnee, with few trees to protect island inhabitants, the shepherds’ huts were often in disrepair. Similarly, without protection from the elements, many of the sheep succumbed to the elements.
In the early 1700s much of the remaining flock fell victim to tick fever, and a substantial number of the remaining sheep were lost as well.
Between the wolves and disease, an untimely end to this venture soon became predictable. Marauding wolves remained a serious problem for the entire area well into the 1800s however, and a bounty was finally placed on wolves.
In the area of East Sandwich alone it was estimated that a single wolf had killed in excess of 2,000 sheep over a two year period. Elimination of that particular wolf had earned the successful hunter a reward equivalent to about $3,200 in today’s dollars.
In the early 1800s a salt-works operation was erected on Mashnee Island to harvest the ocean’s abundant quantities of salt. It was one of over four hundred such operations located all up and down the coastline of Cape Cod in the 1800s. The fledgling industry relied upon a simple process of solar evaporation. The project utilized shallow wooden vats measuring about 16’ x 16’, filled with seawater.
Ultimately the salt venture on Mashnee failed as well. It fell victim to a particularly destructive hurricane, known as The Great September Gale of 1815. A Category 3 storm, it was the first hurricane to strike New England in 180 years.
The cumulative effect of massive winds and water, inundating, and relentlessly pounding the island, completely leveled the Island’s structures and salt-works. According to town records, the tides during that period of time were confirmed to have reached some eight-feet higher than normal, and pieces of the Mashnee Island salt-works were found in Wareham, over six miles distant.
There would be no other storms that even came close to that level of destruction for the next 123 years.
Mashnee Island is part of Gray Gables Village, in the town of Bourne. It sits on the shore of Phinney’s Harbor, with Monument Beach just across the bay.
Gray Gables was the name of a 110-acre private estate owned by President Grover Cleveland, and it functioned as the nation’s first Summer White House, from 1893 through 1896. It eventually became Gray Gables Ocean House restaurant and hotel. The grand (but solid wood) structure caught fire near midnight on December 10, 1973. The blaze, which required over one hundred firefighters to subdue, was originally thought to have been of suspicious origin, but nothing was ever proven, and the land lay vacant for the next thirty years.
The entire island of Mashnee was purchased by a Mr. Michael Murray of Newtonville, Massachusetts in 1923, and Camp Keewaydin, a sailing camp for boys ages 6 –16 was created. Under the direction of Princeton New Jersey’s John H. Rush, the camp was known as “Mashnee of Keewaydin,” and the camp boasted twenty-two buildings and cottages.
According to their promotional flier: “The boys are divided into three separate divisions, from six to sixteen years of age, and the Mashnee Island Yacht Club, for those over sixteen. The regular camp season is eight weeks, beginning the last Saturday in June.” Tutoring was also available.
Bourne’s Historical Town Archives indicate there were roughly sixty to one hundred boys who attended the summer camps with a hefty seasonal tuition fee of three-hundred-fifty dollars!
At the outset of World War II in 1941 the sailing camp was closed in order to station military personnel on the island. Mashnee, positioned near the canal’s entrance, was considered a particularly important vantage point from which Coast Guard servicemen, stationed in watchtowers 24 hours a day, could monitor the surrounding waters for enemy submarines.
During World War I there had been a submarine attack in the area! On Sunday morning, July 21, 1918, the German submarine U-156 surfaced and took aim at the tugboat Perth Amboy and its towline of four large barges as it passed just off Cape Cod. The submarine fired shells which missed the intended targets, instead landing on Nauset Beach in Orleans, on Cape Cod, (successfully scaring the living daylights out of local residents). The attack was eventually successful but fortunately there were no American casualties. Even the ship’s dog was safely rescued.
Shortly after WWII ended, in 1947, an enterprising local insurance company owner, Stephen A. Days, Sr. partnered with Michael Murray to monetize their real estate investment by converting half of the island to income property. The development would be christened Mashnee Village and they would build near identical two-bedroom “cookie-cutter” homes. Quaint, cute-as-a-button, two-bedroom cottages intended as affordable summer rentals.
Always a clever businessman, the enterprising Days promptly branched out. In addition to the insurance business, he opened a very visible real estate company. Becoming quite well known and active in the community.
