Puddle Dock at Low Tide

Strawbery Banke Presents
HISTORIC PORTSMOUTH #233

You are looking at what is now the flat lower field at Strawbery Banke Museum. The tidal creek that attracted the first Portsmouth settlers in 1630, by the late 19^th century, was filled with silt and junk. (Continued below)

HISTORIC PHOTOS of the Greater Portsmouth Area appear here week

NH Founding Site Before it Disappeared Below Landfill

Thomas Bailey Aldrich loved growing up among the crumbling wharves of the faded seaport, but he later had to admit that the waterfront had lost its charm. He wrote: "A corroded section of stovepipe mailed in barnacles, or the skeleton of a hoopskirt protruding from the tide mud like the remains of some old time wreck, is apt to break the enchantment." This area was filled in early in the 20^th century, supported a successful junkyard economy through two world wars, and was cleared for the new museum early in the 1960s.

DETAILED CLOSE-UPS BELOW
(scroll down)

This image from the book STRAWBERY BANKE:
A Seaport Museum 400 Years in the Making
by J. Dennis Robinson
(c) Strawbery Banke Museum Collection

BONUS CLOSE-UP

IMages courtesy Strawbery Banke Museum

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