![Oyster Pond River (Chatham, Massachusetts) map](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Oyster_Pond_River_%28Chatham%2C_Massachusetts%29_map.jpg)
Oyster Pond River, also called Oyster Creek, is a
[U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline data]
The National Map
accessed April 1, 2011 river in
Chatham, Massachusetts
Chatham () is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. Chatham is located at the southeast tip of Cape Cod and has historically been a fishing community. First settled by the English in 1664, the township was originally called Mo ...
on
Cape Cod
Cape Cod is a peninsula extending into the Atlantic Ocean from the southeastern corner of mainland Massachusetts, in the northeastern United States. Its historic, maritime character and ample beaches attract heavy tourism during the summer mont ...
.
The river is an
estuary
An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environment ...
connecting Oyster Pond with Stage Harbor, averaging in depth and bordered with salt
marsh
A marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous rather than woody plant species.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p Marshes can often be found at ...
es. Both river and pond provide excellent anchorage. According to an assessment for the Massachusetts Estuaries Project, its total surface area is .
Oyster Pond
The
Chatham Railroad Depot was built in 1896 when Chatham was the last town on Cape Cod to get railroad service. The direct rail access caused a tourist boom in Chatham.
Many elegant summer homes were built near Oyster Pond. The
Louis Brandeis House
The Louis Brandeis House is a National Historic Landmark on Judges Way, a private way off Stage Neck Road (off Cedar Street) in Chatham, Massachusetts. It stands on a neck of land near the Oyster Pond River. It received its landmark designati ...
, one such summer home, is now a
National Historical Landmark
A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places liste ...
.
Kenneth O. Emery
Kenneth Orris Emery (1914–1998) was a Canadian-born American marine geologist.
Biography
Emery grew up in Texas and studied engineering at North Texas Agricultural College. He then studied geology at the University of Illinois, where he receive ...
(1914–1998) of
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, acronym pronounced ) is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of marine science and engineering.
Established in 1930 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, it i ...
wrote a classic monograph on Oyster Pond entitled ''A Coastal Pond Studied by Oceanographic Methods'', published by
Elsevier
Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', th ...
in 1969. The monograph gives a detailed description of the pond in terms of topography, geology, hydrology, and biology. The pond lost all of its oysters in the late 1800s when the pond's entrance to Stage Harbor was filled in to make way for a railroad.
In the late 1960s Oyster Pond was 25
hectare
The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...
s in area with an average depth of 3 meters and an average
salinity
Salinity () is the saltiness or amount of salt dissolved in a body of water, called saline water (see also soil salinity). It is usually measured in g/L or g/kg (grams of salt per liter/kilogram of water; the latter is dimensionless and equal ...
of about 1.7 grams of salt per kilogram of pond water.
[p. 731]
/ref> Many studies of the pond have been made. The Oyster Pond Environmental Trust (OPET) was formed for the environmental preservation of Oyster Pond and its ecological systems.
References
Massachusetts Estuaries Project
Chatham, Massachusetts
Rivers of Barnstable County, Massachusetts
Estuaries of Massachusetts
Rivers of Massachusetts
Estuaries of Barnstable County, Massachusetts
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