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Photo Aimee Eckman
Property owners on Nauset Light beach got a little bit closer to nature after last week’s storm. |
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Photo Aimee Eckman
By Wednesday, the stairs at Nauset Light beach were hanging on by a thread. By Thursday, they were gone. |
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Nauset Light beach hit hard by storm erosion
Banner Daily Update posted Sunday, April 22.
By Sue Harrison
Banner Staff
EASTHAM — The recent storm continued with renewed vigor what nature has been trying to do for thousands of years: erase Cape Cod and take it back to the bottom of the sea. That was especially visible in Eastham where the cliff near Nauset Light took a substantial battering.
The Nauset Light beach stairs were pummeled and then taken away, disappearing by Thursday, as the wind and high tides continued to eat away at the cliff.
All along the shore, abutters found the shape of their property had changed as the sea edged closer.
Looking back at the history of the area and specifically Nauset Light, it’s clear that this is no new phenomenon. According to an account by the Nauset Light Preservation Society, the area has been subject to higher than average erosion for the Atlantic side of Cape Cod, erosion that has caused the lighthouse to be moved several times.
The original Nauset Light was actually three lights, each on brick towers constructed in 1838. Those were located 800 feet east of the current light and only their foundations can now sometimes been seen far out in the surf.
In 1892, those brick lighthouses were abandoned for three wooden lighthouse buildings set back further on shore. In 1911, two of those were sold and the remaining wooden light was moved inland again. In 1923, that light was retired and a cast iron lighthouse that had been in Chatham was taken apart and brought to Eastham and located 200 feet further away from the cliff’s edge to replace that final wooden light.
That cast iron light, the one currently known as Nauset Light, had only 25 feet separating it from the Atlantic when it was moved yet again in 1996. That move took it 300 feet further inland to the place it now stands.
Erosion along the Atlantic side of the Cape averages 2.8 feet per year but between 1987 and 1994, that increased in the Nauset Light area to an average of 5.8 feet per year. Sometimes there is no erosion in a given year and other years can see 15 feet lost to the waves.
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Apr 19th, 2007