HARWICH – Doug and Carol Tuttle have donated their 7-acre Oak Island Bog to Harwich Conservation Trust after their family stewarded the land for 132 years.
The area is mostly salt marsh with some bordering upland in the Red River estuary.
The salt marsh buffers both banks of an active herring run that flows from Skinequit Pond into Red River, then beyond into Nantucket Sound.
The land entered the Tuttle family’s possession with William Tuttle, Captain of the Monomoy Life Saving Station in the 1880s, who owned 25 percent of the venture and created a cranberry bog on part of the acreage to provide an extra income for his family.
In the 1950s and 60s, the family consolidated ownership by acquiring the other 75 percent from the other original owners.
“HCT thanks the Tuttle family for their longstanding stewardship and preservation vision in entrusting care of the land to HCT. Now, when headed to Red River Beach with family and friends, all can enjoy this salt marsh vista through which river herring earnestly swim upstream each spring,” said Michael Lach, HCT Executive Director in a statement.
About Grady Culhane
