Barrier beaches of the Atlantic coast

By FREDERICK J. H. MERRILL, Ph. D.
REPRINTED FROM THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY FOR OCTOBER, 1890.
NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 1890.
FREDERICK J. H. MERRILL, Ph. D.
FROM Cape Cod to Cape Florida our coast is fringed with barrier beaches. They are the reefs of sand which protect the mainland shore from the storm-waves of the ocean. Isolated and uninhabited were most of these sea-born barriers for a long period in the history of our country, but the need of a breathing-place on the part of the thousands who inhabit our crowded cities has caused, within a few years, a great transformation. Railroad and turnpike bridges have been built, connecting many of them with the shore. Hotels and cottages, club-houses and bathing-houses, in short, buildings for every purpose which contributes to the pleasure and comfort of man have sprung up, as it were by magic, on the south shore of Long Island, on the coast of New Jersey, Virginia, and the Carolinas, on the famed sea-islands of Georgia, and on the coast of eastern Florida.
Much alike are these peninsulas and islands wherever we view them along the coast. The chief variation is in the vegetation which clothes them. The beaches of Long Island are almost barren, but from New Jersey southward many are covered with dense forests which vary in their trees according to the latitude. At Sandy Hook, oaks, red cedars, hollies, maples, and sassafras-trees grow in wonderful luxuriance. On Seven-Mile Beach and Holly Beach the swamp magnolia abounds among the others. In the Carolinas the palmetto appears, often ragged in outline and blighted by the winter frosts. In northern Florida the palmettos are more numerous and show the influence of a warmer climate, while on the southern extremity of the zone of barrier beaches the cocoanut palm, planted by accident or design, rears its leafy crown in luxuriant verdure.
It is not the design of the writer to describe in detail the beaches of the Atlantic coast, but rather to consider their history and mode of growth. As it has been his fortune to spend much time on the sea-shore of New Jersey, he proposes to discuss the barrier beaches of that State as types of their genus.