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".
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.
Hull is a town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States, located on a peninsula at the southern edge of Boston Harbor. Its population was 10,293 at the 2010 census. Hull is the smallest town by land area in Plymouth County and the fourth smallest in the state. However, its population density is within the top thirty towns in the state.
Marshfield is a town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States, on Massachusetts's South Shore. The population was 25,132 at the 2010 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.
Landforms are categorized by characteristic physical attributes such as their creating process, shape, elevation, slope, orientation, rock exposure, and soil type.
Scituate is a seacoast town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States, on the South Shore, midway between Boston and Plymouth. The population was 18,133 at the 2010 census.
Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is a U.S. National Lakeshore on the shore of Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, United States. It extends for 42 miles (67 km) along the shore and covers 73,236 acres. The park has extensive views of the hilly shoreline between Munising and Grand Marais in Alger County, Michigan, with picturesque rock formations, waterfalls, and sand dunes.
The South Shore of Massachusetts is a geographic region stretching south and east from Boston toward Cape Cod along the shores of Massachusetts Bay and Cape Cod Bay. It is subject to varying descriptions including municipalities in eastern Norfolk and Plymouth counties. The South Shore is an affluent area. The median income of the region as of 2020 is $104,691. The median home value of the region as of 2020 is $574,831.
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Saco Bay is a small curved embayment of the Gulf of Maine on the Atlantic coast of Maine in the United States. The name derives "from a map of the coastline made in 1525 by the Spanish explorer Esteban Gómez. He named the bay Bahio de Saco ."
Sottomarina is a small town on a peninsula which has the same name. It is a frazione of the comune of Chioggia, which is part of the Metropolitan City of Venice in the Veneto region in north-eastern Italy.
The Halifax River is part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, located in northeast Volusia County, Florida. The waterway was originally known as the North Mosquito River, but was renamed after George Montagu-Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax, during the British occupation of Florida (1763–1784).
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.
Duxbury Beach is a beach in the town of Duxbury, Massachusetts. It is six miles long and is accessed by the Powder Point Bridge from Duxbury, or Gurnet Road from Marshfield. Approximately 4.5 miles of the beach is owned by Duxbury Beach Reservation, Inc, which leases a portion of the beach out to the town of Duxbury on a yearly basis, under the circumstances that the town of Duxbury provides Harbormasters to police the area.
Pleasure Island is a coastal barrier island in Southeastern North Carolina, USA just south of the City of Wilmington. Pleasure Island is located within Federal Point Township, in New Hanover County. The coastal resort towns of Carolina Beach and Kure Beach, as well as the annexed communities of Wilmington Beach and Hanby Beach are located on the island. The southern end of Pleasure Island was separated from Bald Head Island by Corncake Inlet until the inlet was shoaled and closed in 1998 by Hurricane Bonnie; thus Pleasure Island and Bald Head Island are no longer separate islands.
A shingle beach is a beach which is armoured with pebbles or small- to medium-sized cobbles. Typically, the stone composition may grade from characteristic sizes ranging from 2 to 200 millimetres diameter.
Grenaa is a Danish town and seaport on the east coast of the Jutlandic peninsula. Tourism, education and commerce are important sectors in the economy of Grenaa. It is the only larger town on Djursland. Grenaa is the municipal seat, and the largest town, in Norddjurs Municipality, which covers the northern half of Djursland.
