[Thanks to Linda Smith for transcribing this chapter]
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Green Harbor Dike.
Not only will this description of the Dike give some idea of its purpose and development, but it will also make future generations better acquainted with the present conditions and extent of the salt marshes in the region of Green Harbor river. Nothing has occurred in any town in Plymouth County for the past century that has probably created more contention, opposition, and bad feeling, than the building and continuation of the dike across Green Harbor river in Marshfield. Year after year it has been a bone of contention in our town meetings. It has entered our politics, and the question was obliged to be solved whether a man up for office was a Diker, or an Anti-Diker. The feeling became so intense against the dike that about a decade ago the dike was blown up and severely damaged. It finally became necessary to keep a watchman there night and day to guard it, lest it be blown up again.
The reason of such intense opposition was that the fishermen in the vicinity of Green Harbor river claimed that the diking of the river nearly ruined the fishery business, as the lack of a sufficiently strong current to carry off the sand accumulating there year after year resulted in the filling up of the river. Most of the residents at Green Harbor and Brant Rock are Anti-Dikers. Some others, who owned a portion of the salt marsh affected by the diking of the river, claimed that they preferred their salt meadows without a dike, desiring the crop of salt hay therefrom, rather than bearing their portion of the expense in the construction of the dike.
The Dikers claimed it was for the public good, that the