This week, we left North Holland and traveled two hours by train to our new home for the month in Moordrecht, near the famous cheese town of Gouda, in South Holland. Rolling past the flat green pastureland outlined by canals full of water, we easily completed our move without ever raising our heads above mean sea level.
Both provinces of North and South Holland lie mostly below sea level. Only two other countries in the world (The Maldives and Qatar) have lower average elevations than the Netherlands. This is partially due to the geology, which includes the soft compressible sediments of the massive low-lying Rhine River delta.
This low land area was also rich in shallow subsurface peat deposits, which local inhabitants have been digging for fuel for the past 3,000 years. Historically, with the combination of high river flows, North Sea storms, and peat excavations below sea level, the country has suffered severe flooding and terrible loss of life and land.
Extensive flooded peat excavations can still be seen just outside Gouda at Reeuwijk Lakes. Here, peat was dredged from beneath the water table to fire pottery kilns and beer breweries. When the peat was gone, groundwater recharge filled a complex of 13 shallow rectangular lakes only separated by straight narrow roads.
In the rest of the country, the Dutch have employed a two-step process to drain the swamps and reclaim the flooded land for agricultural and population purposes. First, they constructed long mounds called dikes that fully enclosed a given underwater area. Then, once the ring-dike was completed, they pumped out the water using those iconic Dutch windmills.
To see the greatest concentration of old windmills in the Netherlands, we visited the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Kinderdijk. Here, at one of the country’s best-known tourist attractions, an 18th century dike system and 19 windmills successfully converted the waterlogged land into dry ground called a polder.
The first polder constructed in the Netherlands is also on UNESCO’s list. The Beemster polder was drained in the early 17th century, and is now a fertile grassland known for its happy cows and tasty Beemster cheese.
During the 20th century, the Dutch perfected the land reclamation process and shifted it into high gear. In 1932, a 20-mile long dam called the Afsluitdijk was constructed to close off the vast Zuiderzee Bay from the North Sea. Over time, freshwater runoff replaced the sea water and the Zuiderzee bay was renamed the IJsselmeer lake.
Within the great IJsselmeer lake, the Dutch reclaimed enormous tracts of polder land to create the whole new province of Flevoland. This impressive manmade system of dams, dikes, and high-powered diesel pumps is hailed as the Netherlands’ largest hydraulic engineering project of the 20th century.
Faced with low and subsiding acreage, the Dutch have engineered a masterful land reclamation plan to expand their agricultural, commercial, and residential property. Herein, we continue to admire the happy cows, eat the tasty cheese, and enjoy our travels below sea level.