Monomoy History

A Dynamic Landscape

Monomoy's barrier islands are constantly changing. Sand, eroding and drifting from the outer beaches of Cape Cod, is the foundation of the island refuge. Here, on edge of the vast Atlantic, storms, high winds, tide, and surf endlessly change terrain and shore. Yet in this apparently unstable physical environment, a remarkable array of lasting habitats and niches have evolved, making Monomoy a unique study in beach, dune, marsh, and grassland ecology.

The entire barrier island formation rests on a bed of glacial material left in the wake of glaciers that retreated an estimated 18,000 years ago. Depending on the episodic patterns of erosion and accretion of sand, Monomoy becomes slightly larger or smaller.

Monomoy evolved from a series of small sand-spit barrier islands in the 1800s to an arm of land connected to the mainland for most of the 20th century. In 1958, a spring storm tore through the sand spit severing it from the mainland and creating a single island separated from Morris Island and Chatham. Twenty years later, the island split in two during a turbulent blizzard. Left in its wake was the present-day 2.5-mile stretch of North Monomoy and the 5-mile long arm of South Monomoy. Discover what dynamic changes have affected Monomoy's present configuration.

One a Human Landscape

While Monomoy's character is shaped and reshaped by the sea, it also remains linked with the human history of the New England seacoast. Native people inhabited the peninsula 6,000 to 8,000 years ago. In the 16th century,French and English explorers began mapping the New England coast. By the 18th century, European settlers were firmly established along the Massachusetts coast, including sporadic settlements on Monomoy. By the 19th century, a small town known as Whitewash Village grew up along the southern end of Monomoy around Powder Hole. It flourished for three decades as shipping and fishing port, and as a haven for lost and shipwrecked mariners. But sand drifting in an arc around the southern end of the island finally closed the inlet to boats during a storm. Even so, village residents were reluctant to leave, and human occupancy of the settlement persisted well into the 1930s, mostly as a summer community.

Monomoy Lighthouse

In 1823, the federal government commissioned a lighthouse on four acres of land on the island's southern beach. Rebuilt nearby in 1849, the new 40-foot, cast-iron tower lined in brick was lighted five years later and was fired by oil. After 1923, the more powerful lights at Chatham and Nantucket provided guidance for the ships, and the Monomoy Point Lighthouse was decommissioned. However, Monomoy Light still stand today, with restoration attempts over the years, the most recent completed in 2012. Today the lighthouse, oil shed and keeper's quarters which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places - serve as a seasonal base for refuge biologists and provide opportunities for cultural and natural history tours and educational programs.

As the decades passed, all the other rough-hewn summer cottages were taken down by the elements or abandoned as lifetime leases expired. The last “camp” remained until the spring of 2000.

A Wilderness Refuge

In 1970, Congress designated approximately 97 percent of Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge as the Monomoy Wilderness, a space “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor and does not remain.” Wildlife and human visitors have a place toforever seek out and find comparative solitude,within the enduring resource that is the Monomoy Wilderness, insulated from the works and activities of mankind surrounding it. The Monomoy Wilderness was the only wilderness in southern New England when designated in 1970.