Plum Island; 4,000 Years on a Barrier Beach

On March 10, 2013, 6 houses were lost, 7 condemned and 24 were declared to be in imminent danger on Plum Island in northern Massachusetts. But it was only the latest skirmish in an ongoing battle between man and nature on this fragile barrier beach. Plum Island takes readers to the core of the earth to see how Plum Island’s sands were first formed in the metamorphic forge of the earth’s interior. It will then follow these minerals as they erode off the sides of New Hampshire’s Ice Age Mountains and then wash down the proto Merrimack River to form Plum Island. It will chronicle the lives of the Wooly Mammoth, Paleo-Indians, fishermen, farmers, sand miners and rum runners who made a good but hard living on this rugged island in the past and the homeowners, lawyers and scientists who are locked in present battles about its future. In the end, Plum Island puts a human face on the larger story of how coastal communities must inevitably come to grips with the impact of Sea level rise on our ever-warming planet.