For
well over a century Cape Cod has been one of the premier vacation
destinations in America. Its combination of miles of pristine
beaches along with world class restaurants, accommodations, and shops
have made it a favorite of solo travelers, couples, and families from
all across the globe. From Chatham to Provincetown, from the Canal
to the Atlantic, there is no shortage of wonderful places to visit
and stay.
The
summer resort is a staple of the Cape with generations of families
either having a second home or visiting the same area year after
year. Many of these places lay along the water and have been
romanticized over the decades as the playground of the wealthy. One
of the original summer resort areas though had a very different
journey to the present. Not many such areas can say their roots lie
in the droppings of seabirds and bats. This is the story of Woods
Hole’s Penzance Point and the guano that paved its way to private
community.
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| Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory |
The
narrow finger of land that today is known as Penzance Point sits at
the western end of Woods Hole. It is approximately 110 total acres
in size and today is the location of some of the most expensive homes
on Cape Cod. In the mid-19th century it was a completely different
story. At that time the strip of land was known as Long Neck.
In
the late 1850’s the oncoming Civil War coupled with the whaling
industry’s decline in the eastern United States saw an abundance of
idle clipper ships that had once been used for trade with Asian
countries. An idea was hatched by some of these ships captains based
out of New York and Boston to put them to use. Asa Shiverick Jr.,
whose father and uncles had built some of the ships, led the charge
along with Prince Sears Crowell to create a new business on Cape Cod
featuring fertilizer also known as guano.
Shiverick
and Crowell moved from Dennis to Woods Hole in 1859 and joined up
with the Boston firm of Glidden & Williams. They chose Long Neck
as the location of their new company to be called the Pacific Guano
Company. Used only as a sheep pasture up until that time the spot
was chosen due to it being a natural deep water harbor capable of
holding larger clipper ships. The building of the factory
dramatically altered the tiny village of Woods Hole. Nearly 200
workers were hired to create the factory. A large dormitory, some
small homes, and a Roman Catholic Church were built to accommodate
them.
The
product created by the factory, guano, came mostly from seabird
droppings. It had begun seeing an uptick in popularity during the
early 1850’s as a better alternative to manure as fertilizer. So
popular did guano become that in 1856 Congress passed the U.S. Guano
Act essentially allowing any American citizen could lay claim to any
uninhabited guano-filled island in the world for the purpose of
harvesting the product. After its creation the Pacific Guano Company
staked its claim and began getting ready for work.
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| Woods Hole on the right with the former location of the Pacific Guano Co. near Penzance Point circled. Google Maps |
The
new company chose Howland Island, an island roughly 520 acres in size
and located 1,700 miles southwest of the Hawaiian Islands, to mine
for guano. The Pacific Guano Company’s factory, located about
500-feet west of the present-day Woods Hole Yacht Club, was finished
and put to immediate use in 1863. Soon after opening Azariah Crowell
came aboard as the company’s chemist to add improvements to the
guano making it an even more effective fertilizer. One such
improvement was adding scrap from local fish markets to the guano.
The combination of bird droppings and fish scrap however did not make
Woods Hole a pleasant smelling village.
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| A sketch of the Pacific Guano factory in Woods Hole by S.S. Kilburn c.1860's |
Thirty-three
ships were used during the first few years of mining guano for
fertilizer. Six were lost on their return voyage while two others
were captured by the Confederate Navy during the Civil War. It only
took four years before Howland Island was basically mined out and in
1867 the Pacific Guano Company moved on to Swan Island in the Western
Carribean and Navassa Island located thirty miles west of Haiti. The
company hit its peak after purchasing Chisolm Island in South
Carolina which was rich with rock phosphate. This provided another
option besides bird droppings and fish scrap. It also led to a
second Pacific Guano Company factory being built in Charleston, South
Carolina in September 1869.
The
railroad was extended into Woods Hole in 1872 along with a new stone
bridge across the Eel Pond channel. 200-lb bags of fertilizer were
loaded onto the train cars and shipped out. Pacific Guano had its
own booth at the Centennial exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. As
the 1870’s ended annual sales at Pacific Guano topped 50,000 tons.
It seemed as though the prosperity would never end. That would not
be the case though.
A
diminishing amount of sites to mine guano coupled with an increase in
the advent of artificial fertilizers began to take its toll on
Pacific Guano. In 1889 shortly after an accident involving a worker
word began getting out that the company was in peril. Its
liabilities were listed at $3.5 million ($97.5 million in 2020) at a
stockholders meeting in March 1889. Despite that there were
assurances the company would be able to meet its guano demands for
the year. In August 1889 the company was forced into bankruptcy and
both factories ceased operations.
Two
years later in June 1891 the entirety of the property and Long Neck
as a whole was purchased by Horace Crowell and William Nye. The
factory and most of the buildings associated with Pacific Guano were
leveled although a few were purchased and floated to different
locations. The dormitory was moved and became known as the
Breakwater Hotel. After developing the land for a year Crowell
renamed it Penzance for a similar area in Falmouth, England and put
eighteen lots up for sale.
Over
the decades that followed Penzance Point became one of the most
exclusive areas of Cape Cod. In December 2019 a 9.6-acre estate was
put up for sale on Penzance Point with a listing price of $25
million. It is one of the most expensive home ever listed on Cape
Cod and has since been sold.
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| The Hotel Breakwater in 1913, courtesy of Sturgis Library |
After
decades of life being dominated by the Pacific Guano Company and its
odors of seabird droppings and fish scraps Woods Hole became known as
a hub of the scientific community shortly after the company’s
demise. The last remnant of the Pacific Guano Company, the
Breakwater Hotel, survived until 1960 when the Marine Biological
Laboratory purchased and demolished it for further expansion of the
lab.
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View my previous blog posts: In My Footsteps:Cape Cod's Most Beautiful Routes to Explore
Be sure to check out my website: Christopher Setterlund.com
