You might be wondering why you received a postcard with a picture of the "Former Halfway House Lifesaving Station" on the front and a "Save the Date" message stamped on the back for Matthew and Elizabeth's Wedding. Posted below is a letter from the Bride's father, Gordon Baker, that explains the history of the building affectionately known as "the shack". This letter is posted on the front of the shack for the public who visit Forest Beach in South Chatham to read. Following the reception, we will invite you down to the shack for a party on the beach!
CHATHAM’S NORTH PATROL HOUSE
Forest Beach, South Chatham, Massachusetts
Listed in the National Register of Historic Sites in 1978
Due to the magnitude of shipwrecks on Cape Cod’s sandy shoals, stretching from Monomoy Point to
Provincetown, the Massachusetts Humane Society built several “charity huts” in 1785 along the coast for shipwreck survivors. In 1792, the first such hut on Cape Cod was built on Stout’s Creek, a mile from Peaked Hill in Provincetown. These huts were manned by volunteers.
In 1872, the United States Life Saving Service was established to assume this responsibility and Life Saving Stations were built on the beaches near treacherous shoals from New Jersey to Cape Cod. Originally, there were thirteen Life Saving Stations on Cape Cod, four of which were in Chatham. Surfmen patrolled the beaches for shipwrecks and seamen in distress. The Stations were located approximately five miles apart and halfway between them were small shacks. These halfway houses were a place where the surfmen could get warm, meet the surfmen from the adjoining station and exchange their brass surfmen’s checks. Later, the halfway houses were connected to the Stations by telephone, even before the townspeople had telephone service.From the late 1880s, surfmen from the United States Life Saving Service at the Chatham Life Saving Station on Morris Island would walk to the North Patrol House which was located near the foot of Holway Street, across from the southern tip of North Beach and the open Atlantic Ocean. At some point in time, between the 1920s and the 1940s, it was moved down the beach to the south of Mistover Lane near the foot of Water Street.
After being abandoned by the Coast Guard, two Chatham natives, Wessey Eldredge of Water Street and Robert Tuttle of Old Main Street, used the shack as a boat storage shed and beach shanty. Here it sat near “Good Walter” Eldredge’s house, a two story house he built from shipwrecks and lumber salvaged from the sea on beach land that had been built up by accretion. After “Good Walter” died in the late 1950s, the town took an easement over this beach and burned “Good Walter’s” house down. The shack remained since it was privately owned and had pre-existing rights to be there.Mr. and Mrs. Nathaniel Thompson of Mill Hill Lane, Chatham, bought the shack on June 27, 1953, for a $10.00 Bill of Sale, from Mrs. Georgia Eldredge, the widow of Wessey Eldredge. After Nat Thompson died, his wife, Pieter, sold the shack to South Chatham native Gordon F. Baker on October 10, 1973, for a $5.00 Bill of Sale, with the understanding that he would accept the responsibility of protecting this historical North Patrol House from the elements.
Until the time of the break in North Beach, a barrier beach, on January 2, 1987, the two wooden jetties, one on each side of the shack, counterbalanced the flow of sand, and the shack sat proudly on the point to the south of Andrew Harding’s Lane on a piece of beach that had built up by accretion since the previous cycle of the barrier beach. After the 1987 break, Baker moved the shack back from the eroding beach five times with the help of many friends, to save it from the encroaching ocean. Finally, on February 21, 1988, with no other place to move it, he was forced to take it off that beach, and, on May 20, 1988, he placed it on a registered scow on his family beach at the end of Forest Beach Road in South Chatham.The shack was originally built to be on the edge of the shore to aid the United States Life Saving Service, and since it has remained on Chatham’s shore for over one hundred years, Gordon Baker is committed to preserving the historical integrity of the North Patrol House by keeping it on a Chatham beach. If the sand at Mistover Lane should once again build up by accretion, Baker or his heirs would consider placing it back at its original site on its established easement where it historically would again be on the North Patrol.
October 2007 Gordon F. Baker
