Mattapoisett Residents Are Wondering What This Is

Some of my favorite parts about our area of the country are the signs of history that are sprinkled throughout the modern landscape.

Wickford Village, a town close to my childhood home, is home to some of the oldest buildings in America. Then there is the countless number of Victorian homes, old granite markings that define town lines, random pieces of stone and brick that are sinking into the ground that align your path in the woods, and intriguing monuments weathered by the years of being beaten by ocean water and the changing seasons.

History is alive and well in many areas of the SouthCoast, and I am curious to know if this latest image of an unknown structure is anything of merit.

A woman named Donna posted to a local Facebook group with the picture above, taken at Mattapoisett Neck.

At first glance, it looks like a dock that washed away left the stakes behind, but dozens of comments poured in with their own ideas that make me wonder if it’s something more.

One man commented that the Neck “used to be one large farm (fields now) and there are fences and cow paths throughout the marshes.”

Another person believes it’s the remnants of a fence from when farmers used to harvest salt hay from the marshes and needed to mark off territory.

However, the vast majority of people seem to think there is a little more history in these wooden posts.

A man named Horace commented by saying it’s “old Indian fish traps. That picture cedar lasts forever in this salt environment…Designed so fish would be corralled at high tide and many trapped and harvested at low tide."

Others commented in agreement, calling the original structure “fish weir," a system of fishing that Native Americans used long ago on the SouthCoast.

That’s why I love this area. One second, you think you are looking at an old sea dock, the next minute you discover it was used hundreds and hundreds of years ago for fishing. History is all around us if you look hard enough.

Have you spotted any signs of history lately?