Coonamesset River
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The Coonamesset River (or Coonamessett River) is a river in Falmouth, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. The river has its headwaters in the Coonamessett Pond, flows generally south to Great Pond estuary, and empties into the Vineyard Sound just east of Falmouth Heights.
Long ago the river may have been bordered by red maple or white cedar swamps, when the Wampanoag fished for herring. After European settlers arrived in 1660, the river was initially known as the Five Mile River. Philip Dexter located Falmouth's first grist mill at its mouth around 1700, and by 1795 there were three mills along the river with a corresponding decline in fisheries. A "herring war" began in 1798 with a bylaw giving an elected committee the right to remove any obstructions to allow fish free passage from April 1st to June 10th. Tensions reached a peak in 1805 when the anti-herring group packed a cannon on the Village Green with herring. It exploded, killing the gunner. In 1865 further vestiges of the war appeared with another bylaw that read:
- Voted that the herring of rivers of the town be allowed to pass up and down said rivers into the ponds unmolested, from 12 o’clock, noon Saturday, to 12 noon on Monday each week, except that the herring in Coonamessett River be allowed from 10 o’clock at night to 5 in the morning of each day in the week unmolested in addition.
In 1891 the Swift brothers converted river wetlands into cranberry bogs, thus straightening, diking, damming, and channeling the river, destroying native aquatic plants, and reducing the meandering river to a simple ditch. Cranberry cultivation increased to 15,000 barrels by 1895. David Belding, Commonwealth Biologist, reported in his 1912 "Report Upon the Alewife Fisheries of Massachusetts":
- Below Coonamessett Pond is a timbered channel 3 feet in width. At the upper fish house is a dam below which the stream passes through 150 acres of cranberry bogs, where it is crossed by nine embankments before it finally passes into a series of five ponds. In 1906, alewives were plentiful in Coonamessett River, and a 300-yard ditch was dug to allow the fish to reach Coonamessett Pond. The fishery,…is of considerable importance, as the stream is naturally adapted for alewives and Coonamessett Pond provides an excellent spawning ground. The inevitable conflict with the cranberry industry cannot be remedied except by requiring the bog owners to maintain competent passageways for the fish.
In 1971, the town of Falmouth purchased more than 100 acres of upland, cranberry bog, and Coonamesset River for conservation. Since this time, cranberry cultivation has continued unchanged and the River herring have continued to decline. In 2004, dedicated fish counters saw only 640 fish and the only about 2000 herring returned to spawn. Unless the River is restored, the herring run will go extinct.
