Humarock (often called Humarock Beach or Humarock Island) is part of Scituate, Massachusetts, United States. Humarock is a picturesque seaside village surrounded by water and situated on Cape Cod Bay midway between Boston and Plymouth. It was separated from the rest of the town in the Portland Gale of 1898 in which the mouth of the North River shifted. Humarock is now accessible from Scituate only by boat or from the Town of Marshfield by bridge.
The common perception that Humarock is an island is supported by the fact that the place is accessed by boat or by crossing bridges that span the South River. However, Humarock is clearly a very long, slender peninsula rather than an island as can be seen on aerial images of the area.
To reach Humarock over land one would have to walk through a large dune or Rexhame Beach.
The coast of Scituate is marked by four distinct bluffs, running from First Cliff on the northern end of the town's coast down to Fourth Cliff in the southern end. Prior to the Portland Gale, Humarock was connected to the Scituate mainland at Third Cliff. The North River flowed south between Fourth Cliff and Marshfield, joined the South River, and entered Massachusetts Bay two kilometers to the south of the current opening.
A thin strip of beach which connected Third Cliff to Fourth Cliff was breached by the storm surge of the Portland Gale of 1898, separating Humarock from the rest of Scituate. Eventually the old inlet silted in, forcing the South River to flow north between Marshfield and Fourth Cliff where it now joins the North River to enter the ocean.
Although Humarock is now connected by land to the Rexhame section of Marshfield, there are no roads across the old inlet. As a result, Fourth Cliff and the rest of the Humarock part of Scituate are only accessible via the Marshfield Avenue and Julian Street bridges from Marshfield.
The change in course of the North River also increased the salinity of the large marsh in the area surrounding the current outlet, resulting in the loss of the valuable salt haying business.
The name "Humarock" is often said to come from the Wampanoag language and have had a meaning like "seashell place" or "rock carving." However, this etymology can be traced back to Edward Rowe Snow, a Marshfield writer better-known for his imagination than his attention to historical accuracy.
The common belief that the name is a corruption of "Humming Rocks" (referring to the crash of the surf) does not seem implausible, but historical records suggest that the origin of the name lies in the word "hummock" i.e. a hill near a marsh. As early as 1732 town records refer to the Fourth Cliff area as "Humock Flatt" or "Hummock Flats" and other variants. The record of a shipwreck by this spot in 1847 is noted as off "Hummock Beach." The Scituate town map of 1879 labels the peninsula south of Fourth Cliff as "Shore Hummock". [1]
The shoreline of Humarock is characterized by the presence of innumerable roughly fist-sized, smooth, flattened rocks and these were even more prevalent before the Blizzard of '78. The name "Hummock Rock-beach" became "Humarock Beach" and finally "Humarock".
Plymouth County is a county in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, south of Boston. As of the 2020 census, the population was 530,819. Its county seats are Plymouth and Brockton. In 1685, the county was created by the Plymouth General Court, the legislature of Plymouth Colony, predating its annexation by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Ocean Bluff-Brant Rock is a census-designated place (CDP) in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States, composed of the neighborhoods of Ocean Bluff, Brant Rock, Fieldston, and Rexhame in the town of Marshfield. The population of the CDP was 4,970 at the 2010 census.
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Marshfield is a town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States, on Massachusetts's South Shore. The population was 25,825 at the 2020 census.
The Jurassic Coast is a World Heritage Site on the English Channel coast of southern England. It stretches from Exmouth in East Devon to Studland Bay in Dorset, a distance of about 96 miles (154 km), and was inscribed on the World Heritage List in mid-December 2001.
Scituate is a seacoast town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States, on the South Shore, midway between Boston and Plymouth. The population was 19,063 at the 2020 census.
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The Portland Gale was a storm that struck the coast of New England on November 26 and 27, 1898. The storm formed when two low pressure areas merged off the coast of Virginia and travelled up the coast; at its peak, it produced a storm surge of about ten feet in Cohasset harbor and hurricane-force winds in Nantucket. The storm killed more than 400 people and sank more than 150 boats and ships. It also changed the course of the North River, separating the Humarock portion of Scituate, Massachusetts, from the rest of Scituate.
The North River is a river, approximately 12 miles (19 km) long, in eastern Massachusetts, the United States. It is primarily a tidal river, formed by the confluence of the Indian Head River and Herring Brook. The North River forms the boundary between the towns of Norwell, Pembroke, Massachusetts, Hanover, Massachusetts and downstream, the boundary between Scituate and Marshfield. The river flows into Massachusetts Bay at New Inlet, where it also converges with the mouth of the South River. The North River area is also known as the "Irish Riviera" due to the large Irish American population that migrated during the 19th century.
The Outer Barrier, also known as the Long Island and New York City barrier islands, refers to the string of barrier islands that divide the lagoons south of Long Island, New York from the Atlantic Ocean. These islands include Long Beach Barrier Island, Barnum Island, Jones Beach Island, Fire Island and Westhampton Island. The outer barrier extends 75 miles (121 km) along the South Shore of Long Island, from the Rockaway Peninsula in New York City to the east end of Shinnecock Bay in Suffolk County.
The Barnegat Peninsula, also known as the Island Beach Peninsula or Barnegat Bay Island and colloquially as "the barrier island", is a 20-mile (32 km) long, narrow barrier peninsula located on the Jersey Shore in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States, that divides the Barnegat Bay from the Atlantic Ocean. It is a vacation destination and summer colony area and is heavily dependent on tourism, real estate and fishing.
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Dorset is a county located in the middle of the south coast of England. It lies between the latitudes 50.512°N and 51.081°N and the longitudes 1.682°W and 2.958°W, and occupies an area of 2,653 km2. It spans 90 kilometres (56 mi) from east to west and 63 kilometres (39 mi) from north to south.
