Nantucket is an island 30 miles (48.3 km) south of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in the United States. Together with the small islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget, it constitutes the town of Nantucket, Massachusetts , and the coterminous Nantucket County , which are consolidated. Part of the town is designated the Nantucket CDP , or census designated place. The region of Surfside on Nantucket is the southernmost settlement in Massachusetts.
Nantucket is a tourist destination and summer colony. The population of the island soars from approximately 10,000 to 50,000 during the summer months, due to tourists and summer residents. According to Forbes Magazine, in 2006, Nantucket had the highest median property value of any Massachusetts zip code.
The Nantucket Historic District, comprising all of Nantucket Island, was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 13, 1966. In doing so the National Park Service paid particular note to the settlements of Nantucket and Siasconset. The island features one of the highest concentrations of pre-Civil War structures in the United States.
Origin of the name
Also nicknamed "The Grey Lady" due to occasional intense fog, Nantucket takes its name from a word in an Eastern Algonquian language of southern New England, originally spelled variously as natocke, nantaticut, nantican, and nautican. The meaning of the term is uncertain, though it may have meant "in the midst of waters," or "far away island."
Other sources state the Native American word "Natockete," meaning "faraway land," to be Nantucket's namesake. The Wampanoag Native Americans referred to the island as "Canopache," or "place of peace."
History
Beginnings
The island's beginnings in western history can possibly be traced to its conjectured sighting by Norsemen in the 11th century. But it was not until 1602 that Captain Bartholomew Gosnold of Falmouth, England sailed his bark Concord past the bluffs of Siasconset and really put Nantucket on the map. The island's original inhabitants, the Wampanoag Indians, lived undisturbed until 1641 when the island was deeded by the English (the authorities in control of all land from the coast of Maine to New York) to Thomas Mayhew and his son, merchants of Watertown and Martha's Vineyard. Nantucket was part of Dukes County, New York until 1691, when it was transferred to the newly formed Province of Massachusetts Bay and split off to form Nantucket County. The entire area of the New York county had been purchased by Thomas Mayhew Sr. of Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1641, buying out competing land claims. The earliest English settlement in the area began on neighboring island Martha's Vineyard.
As Europeans began to settle Cape Cod, the island became a place of refuge for regional Indians, as Nantucket was not yet settled by Europeans. The growing population of Native Americans welcomed seasonal groups of Indians who traveled to the island to fish and later harvest whales that washed up on shore.
English settlement and the history of whaling in Nantucket
The history of Nantucket's settlement by the English did not began in earnest until 1659, when Thomas Mayhew sold his interest to the "nine original porchasers," Tristram Coffin, Thomas Macy, Christopher Hussey, Richard Swayne, Thomas Barnard, Peter Coffin, Stephen Greenleafe, John Swayne and William Pike, "for the sum of thirty Pounds...and also two beaver hats, one for myself, and one for my wife."
Nantucket was formerly the world's leading whaling port (and still serves as home port for a small fishing industry). Herman Melville comments on Nantucket's whaling dominance in Moby Dick , Chapter 14: "Two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires." Melville's character Starbuck is from Nantucket.
In his 1835 history of Nantucket Island, Obed Macy wrote that in the early pre-1672 colony a whale of the kind called "scragg" entered the harbor and was pursued and killed by the settlers. This event started the Nantucket whaling industry. A. B. Van Deinse points out that the "scrag whale", described by P. Dudley in 1725 as one of the species hunted by the early New England whalers, was almost certainly the Gray Whale which has florished on the West Coast of North America with protection from whaling.
By 1850, whaling was in decline and the island suffered great economic hardships, worsened by the 1846 "Great Fire" that, fueled by whale oil and lumber, devastated the main town, burning some 36 acres. It left hundreds homeless and poverty stricken, and many people left the island. Another contributor to the decline was the silting up of the harbor which prevented the large whaling ships from entering and leaving the port. In addition, the development of railroads made mainland whaling ports more attractive because of the ease of transshipment of whale oil onto trains, an advantage unavailable to an island.
Later history
As a result of this depopulation, the island was left under-developed and isolated until the mid-20th century. The isolation kept many of the pre-Civil War buildings intact and by the 1950s, enterprising developers began buying up large sections of the island and restoring them to create an upmarket destination for the wealthy in the Northeastern United States. This highly controlled development can be compared to neighboring Martha's Vineyard, the development of which served as a model for what the Nantucket developers wanted to avoid.
In the 1960s Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard considered seceding from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In 1977, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard actually attempted (unsuccessfully) to secede from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The secession vote was sparked by a proposed change to the Massachusetts Constitution, which reduced the islands' representation in the Massachusetts General Court.
Geology and geography
Nantucket was formed by the uttermost reach of the Laurentide Ice Sheet during the recent Wisconsin Glaciation, shaped by the subsequent rise in sea level. The island's low ridge across the northern section was deposited as glacial moraine during a period of glacial standstill, a period during which till continued to arrive, but melted at a stationary front. The southern part of the island is an outwash plain, sloping away from the arc of moraine and shaped at its margins by the sorting actions and transport of longshore drift. Nantucket became an island when rising sea levels reflooded Buzzards Bay about 5,000–6,000 years ago.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Nantucket County has a total area of 303.5 sq mi (786 km 2 ), 84.25% of which is water. The area of Nantucket Island proper is 47.8 sq mi(123.8 km 2 ). The triangular region of ocean between Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod, is Nantucket Sound. The highest point on the island is Folger Hill which stands 109 feet (33 m) above sea level. Altar Rock is a close second at a height of 108 feet (33 m) above sea level.
The entire island, as well as the adjoining islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget, comprise both the Town of Nantucket and the County of Nantucket. The main settlement, also called Nantucket, is located at the western end of Nantucket Harbor, where it opens into Nantucket Sound. Key localities on the island include Madaket, Surfside, Polpis, Wauwinet, Massachusetts, Miacomet and Siasconset (often abbreviated as 'Sconset).
National protected area
Coatue
Coatue is a long barrier beach on Nantucket Island, separating Nantucket Sound from Nantucket Harbor. It has six points: First Point is situated due north of the village of Shimmo's Pimneys Point. Second Point, is north-northeast of the village of Shawkemo. Second Point is salt marsh. Third Point is due north of the Pocomo Peninsula, which contains the villages of Pocomo and West Wauwinet. The gap between Coatue and Pocomo is called the Wauwinet Straits. This deep and swift waterway has currents that reach 5 knots (9.3 km/h). Bass Point is the first point totally within Wauwinet Harbor. Wyers Point, the last point of land on Coatue, Wyers is connected to Coskata. At the head of Coatue is Coskata Pond.
Hummock Pond
Hummock Pond is a large pond on the south shore of Nantucket Island. It was created in the last ice age by the ice melt and used to be much larger, but during the blizzard of 1978 large swells from the Atlantic closed off the smaller western half, known as Clark's Cove. The pond is narrow and one of the deepest on Nantucket, and north head of the pond is connected by a small river. The
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