Since 2002, writers associated with the Historical Society of Old Yarmouth have been publishing short essays on Cape Cod history, and especially Yarmouth history, in the mid-Cape paper, The Register. This fall, the society put these together into a book: Capturing Cape Cod History. Some of the essays have information about the economic history of Bass River.
Bass River in the late 19th Century. From University of New Hampshire's Dimond Library via David Kew's Cape Cod History web site.
Essays refer to the Indian community on the lower river where South Yarmouth is now, its final destruction by smallpox in the 18th Century, and the subsequent development of the Quaker community there.
Bass River blocked east-west land traffic along the southern side of the Cape. Duncan Oliver explains how the obstacle was overcome in "The Six Bridges on Bass River." The first settlers arrived in the Dennis-Yarmouth area in the 17th Century, but the first bridge over the river wasn't built until 1815, and the first bridge on the lower river wasn't built until the 1830s. Proposals to build bridges earlier ran into political opposition; one concern was the potential for conflict with boat traffic moving up and down the river. The early bridges were built by private corporations. Oliver takes the story all the way up to the construction of the Route 6 bridges in the 1950s.
Oliver also describes the impacts of the Great October Gale of 1841 ("The Storm That Changed the Course of Cape Cod History" and "Striped Bass - Now You See Them Now You Don't"). The storm hit during a time of transition, four years after the economic crisis of 1837. It damaged the fishing industry and coastal saltworks. Bass River silted up, wrecking weir fisheries at the north end of the river in Follins Pond, destroying the small community of Weir Village at the upper end of Follins Pond (it "became a ghost town", "houses were dragged or flaked" to other parts of Yarmouth), and destroying striped bass habitat. It was one of the events that "marked the start of the destruction of the old maritime economy and the beginning of the tourist industry."
Coasting vessels moving through Nantucket Sound would often anchor close inshore, off of Bass River, to wait for favorable winds before passing south of Monomoy Island and entering the Atlantic. Sometimes the shift in the winds was unfavorable and the ships would have to get to sea quickly, slipping - or abandoning - their anchors to avoid being driven on shore.
Lost anchors were a business opportunity for local anchor draggers. Jack Braginton-Smith and Duncan Oliver describe several approaches to anchor dragging ("Anchor Dragging - Lost Anchors"), including the use of two small schooners to drag a 2,000 foot rope across the bottom in the area where the anchor was thought to have been lost.
Source: Dennis Historical Society. A version of this photo in "Capturing" identifies the two vessels in the foreground (yes, there are two) as anchor draggers.
Sometimes vessels were lost off of this coast. Duncan Oliver's "The Forgotten Yarmouth Shipwrecks" is mostly about shipwrecks on Cape Cod Bay, but there are brief references to the wreck of the General Warren on Dogfish Bar off of Bass River in 1871 and the motor boat rescue of the crew of the Charlotte T. Sibley in 1907.
In the late 19th Century there were various proposals for a ship canal from Nantucket Sound to Cape Cod Bay, by way of Bass River (below in red). Ultimately a canal was built from Buzzards Bay to Cape Cod Bay (below in yellow) Paul Wackrow has a short article on the Bass River canal plans (''The Canal at Bass River"). There wasn't much interest in the original proposals after the first years of the 20th Century. But a new and somewhat different idea came up in the 1960s. For several years, the town of Yarmouth debated the possibility of a small pleasure boat canal over the Bass River route.
Actual canal (yellow) and the projected Bass River canal (red). Source: Google maps.
Prohibition came to the Cape in 1920. Haynes Mahoney, Jack Braginton-Smith and Duncan Oliver have rum-running stories: "Rumrunning in the Mid-Cape Area." Larger vessels would lie offshore and smaller vessels would run back and forth, bringing the liquor in at places that included the mouth of Bass River.
The speakeasy "Casa Madrid" sat a few hundred yards back from the beach in South Yarmouth (still called "Smugglers' Beach"). Mayor Curley of Boston may or may not have been escorted out a window by his bodyguards during a 1932 raid by the state police. Just the other side of the river mouth, the West Dennis jetty was favored by rum runner Bud Cummings "as it was isolated and local officials were not too demanding."Satellite view from Bing. The mouth of Bass River. The circle shows the location of the Casa Madrid - just back from the beach, the arrow points to the base of the West Dennis breakwater.
Roosevelt was elected, prohibition was repealed, and the New Deal came to Cape Cod. The Works Progress Administration put many Cape Codders to work, and changed the Cape in ways that can be seen today. Stuart Baker, Maureen Rukstalis and Duncan Oliver provide a partial inventory of WPA programs in "We Poke Along' (the WPA)."
In the Bass River area, the WPA supported reseeding of shellfish beds, construction of the section of Route 28 that runs parallel to Old Main Street in South Yarmouth and leads to the Bass River bridge, and the construction of the bridge that carries Route 28 over the river. This bridge cost $200,000, of which the WPA paid $60,000 and the state paid $140,000.
Source: Postcard in my possession. This bridge is on the site of the bridge with the anchor draggers in the picture above. The earlier picture looks west, this looks east. The large ship in the earlier photo was a few yards from the pavilion on the right in this one.
Capturing Cape Cod History has many pictures and maps. One of the pictures in this post is in the book and the others were cobbled together from other sources.
Edits on January 5, January 18.