BARRIER BEACHES OF THE
ATLANTIC COAST.
By FREDERICK J. H. MERRILL, Ph. D.
REPRINTED FROM THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY
FOR OCTOBER, 1890.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
1890.
BARRIER BEACHES OF THE
ATLANTIC COAST
BY
FREDERICK J. H. MERRILL, Ph. D.
FROM Cape Cod to Cape Florida our coast is fringed withbarrier beaches. They are the reefs of sand which protectthe mainland shore from the storm-waves of the ocean. Isolatedand uninhabited were most of these sea-born barriers for a longperiod in the history of our country, but the need of a breathing-placeon the part of the thousands who inhabit our crowdedcities has caused, within a few years, a great transformation.Railroad and turnpike bridges have been built, connecting manyof them with the shore. Hotels and cottages, club-houses andbathing-houses, in short, buildings for every purpose which contributesto the pleasure and comfort of man have sprung up, asit were by magic, on the south shore of Long Island, on the coast[2]of New Jersey, Virginia, and the Carolinas, on the famed sea-islandsof Georgia, and on the coast of eastern Florida.
Much alike are these peninsulas and islands wherever we viewthem along the coast. The chief variation is in the vegetationwhich clothes them. The beaches of Long Island are almostbarren, but from New Jersey southward many are covered withdense forests which vary in their trees according to the latitude.At Sandy Hook, oaks, red cedars, hollies, maples, and sassafras-treesgrow in wonderful luxuriance. On Seven-Mile Beach andHolly Beach the swamp magnolia abounds among the others.In the Carolinas the palmetto appears, often ragged in outlineand blighted by the winter frosts. In northern Florida the palmettosare more numerous and show the influence of a warmerclimate, while on the southern extremity of the zone of barrierbeaches the cocoanut palm, planted by accident or design, rearsits leafy crown in luxuriant verdure.
It is not the design of the writer to describe in detail thebeaches of the Atlantic coast, but rather to consider their historyand mode of growth. As it has been his fortune to spend muchtime on the sea-shore of New Jersey, he proposes to discuss thebarrier beaches of that State as types of their genus.
They are sandy islands and peninsulas, from two to twentymiles in length and from half a mile to a mile in width, separatedby inlets and usually divided from the mainland by an intervalof several miles, in which are broad expanses of salt meadow,fringing and separating a series of channels, bays, and sounds.
The beaches which are now in their highest state of developmentare Sandy Hook, Seven-Mile Beach, and Holly Beach nearCape May. These typical examples of the sea-born barriers aremuch alike in structure, and consist of four principal divisions.The first division, or interior, is an undulating area covered withheavy timber, of which the size suggests its age. Immense hollies,oaks, pines, and red cedars abound, many of the first measuringtwo feet in diamet