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 A cape is a clothing accessory or a sleeveless outer garment which drapes the wearer's back, arms, and chest, and connects at the neck. History Capes were common in medieval Europe, especially when combined with a hood in the chaperon. Th ...

midway between

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

and Plymouth. It was separated from the rest of the

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an ori ...

in the

Portland Gale 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 ab ...

of 1898 in which the mouth of the North River shifted. Humarock is now accessible from Scituate only by

boat A boat is a watercraft of a large range of types and sizes, but generally smaller than a ship, which is distinguished by its larger size, shape, cargo or passenger capacity, or its ability to carry boats. Small boats are typically found on inl ...

or from the Town of Marshfield by bridge.

The peninsula

The common perception that Humarock is an

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

is supported by the fact that the place is accessed by boat or by crossing

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

s 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 separation

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 Mainland is defined as "relating to or forming the main part of a country or continent, not including the islands around it egardless of status under territorial jurisdiction by an entity" The term is often politically, economically and/or dem ...

at Third Cliff. The North River flowed south between Fourth Cliff and Marshfield, joined the South River, and entered

Massachusetts Bay Massachusetts Bay is a bay on the Gulf of Maine that forms part of the central coastline of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Description The bay extends from Cape Ann on the north to Plymouth Harbor on the south, a distance of about . Its ...

two kilometers to the south of the current opening. A thin strip of

beach A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc sh ...

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

silt Silt is granular material of a size between sand and clay and composed mostly of broken grains of quartz. Silt may occur as a soil (often mixed with sand or clay) or as sediment mixed in suspension with water. Silt usually has a floury feel ...

ed in, forcing the South River to flow north between Marshfield and Fourth Cliff where it now joins the North River to enter the

ocean The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth and contains 97% of Earth's water. An ocean can also refer to any of the large bodies of water into which the wo ...

. 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 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 a ...

in the area surrounding the current outlet, resulting in the loss of the valuable

salt hay ''Sporobolus pumilus'', the saltmeadow cordgrass, also known as salt hay, is a species of cordgrass native to the Atlantic coast of the Americas, from Newfoundland south along the eastern United States to the Caribbean and north-eastern Mexico. I ...

ing business.

Etymology

The name "Humarock" is often said to come from the

Wampanoag language The Massachusett dialects, as well as all the Southern New England Algonquian (SNEA) languages, could be dialects of a common SNEA language just as Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible languages that essentially exist in a diale ...

and have had a meaning like " seashell place" or "

rock carving A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

." However, this

etymology Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the Phonological chan ...

can be traced back to

Edward Rowe Snow Edward Rowe Snow (August 22, 1902 Winthrop, Massachusetts – April 10, 1982 Boston, Massachusetts) was an American writer and historian. Life He was the son of Edward Sumpter and Alice Nichsols (Rowe) Snow. He graduated from Harvard University ...

, a Marshfield writer better-known for his imagination than his attention to

historical accuracy Historicity is the historical actuality of persons and events, meaning the quality of being part of history instead of being a historical myth, legend, or fiction. The historicity of a claim about the past is its factual status. Historicity denot ...

. 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 In geology, a hummock is a small knoll or mound above ground.Bates, Robert L. and Julia A. Jackson, ed. (1984). “hummock.” Dictionary of Geological Terms, 3rd Ed. New York: Anchor Books. p. 241. They are typically less than in height and ...

" i.e. a

hill A hill is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain. It often has a distinct summit. Terminology The distinction between a hill and a mountain is unclear and largely subjective, but a hill is universally considered to be not a ...

near a

. 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".Humarock.net
/ref> The

shoreline A shore or a shoreline is the fringe of land at the edge of a large body of water, such as an ocean, sea, or lake. In physical oceanography, a shore is the wider fringe that is geologically modified by the action of the body of water past a ...

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".

Notes

References

Flooding nearly strands firefighters in Humarock

External links

Humarock MemoriesHistorical map of ScituateHumarock.com
{{coord, 42, 08, 10, N, 70, 41, 26, W, type:city_region:US-MA_source:gnis, display=title Beaches of Massachusetts Landforms of Plymouth County, Massachusetts Peninsulas of Massachusetts Scituate, Massachusetts Tourist attractions in Plymouth County, Massachusetts