Cape Cod has more than its fair share of historic homes. Many are cared for by historical societies, some have been renovated and are now private. A few of these became iconic through the stories behind them. One of the biggest Cape Cod icons of the 20th century starred in a best-selling book. It showcased the rustic dream of living on a beach. In a fitting piece of irony that icon became a victim of the very sea that it romanticized in the book. It was the Outermost House and this is the story behind the icon.
The story begins in 1925. Struggling author Henry Beston purchased fifty acres of beach roughly two miles south of the Coast Guard station in Eastham. He then asked his neighbor Harvey Moore a favor. Could he build him a small 20x16-foot, two-room shack in those Eastham dunes? Moore, a carpenter by trade, and his crew obliged and created a basic domicile consisting of a bedroom and kitchen/living room. After digging a well in the sand, and having the necessary outhouse built the job was done.
Beston intended to only spend a fortnight in the dune shack he called Fo'castle as a respite from his struggles as a writer and the lingering effects of World War I. However the sand and the sea called to him so much that he extended his stay.
After World War I Beston, born in Quincy, Massachusetts, began visiting Cape Cod to see friends. He stayed, among other places, at a cottage on Salt Pond in Eastham. Beston had a desire for a place of his own leading to him ask Harvey Moore to create it for him.
Henry Beston ended up spending an entire year in Fo'castle in 1926-27. Alone with his thoughts he wrote of what he saw and heard in his solitude. Despite writing several notebooks worth of material Beston initially had no intention of turning them into a proper manuscript. It turns out his hand might have been forced into creating one of the masterpieces of 20th century literature.
In 1927 Beston proposed to his girlfriend, accomplished writer Elizabeth Coatsworth. Believing in the importance of his manuscript Elizabeth told Beston: "No book, no marriage." He cultivated his collection of notes into The Outermost House. Beston gave it this title due to his belief that his shack on the Great Beach was the 'outermost' in the eastern United States. The book was published in October 1928. Henry and Elizabeth were married in June 1929.
The Outermost House, released through Doubleday and Doran, was Beston's eighth published book. The initial sales were good and Beston even went to Europe to help promote it. In the first few years after the publishing of the book he would routinely pay visits to his beloved Fo'castle while also living in Hingham.
A visit to Damariscotta Lake, Maine to see his friend, painter Jake Day, saw Beston, Elizabeth and their two daughters head north. The family bought a parcel of land called Chimney Farm in the town of Nobleboro, Maine in 1931 and by 1933 they had permanently relocated there. Though he would occasionally return to Cape Cod in the coming decades, Beston for all intents and purposes was a Maine resident into retirement.
So what of Fo'castle? The shack that became an icon of 20th century American literature? Sadly its position on the Great Beach of Eastham put it in danger from the get-go. It was built only thirty-feet in from the sea. Erosion rates have always been high on the Outer Cape. On the ocean-side of Eastham where Fo'castle resided the erosion rate was an average of 3.3-feet per year between 1865-2015.
In March 1931 a large Nor'easter slammed Cape Cod, destroying two cottages on the Eastham dunes and pushing another into the Nauset Marsh. Another storm in January 1933 left Fo'castle only seven-feet from the bluffs edge. Beston himself expressed concern over his Outermost House succumbing to the elements. It was moved back from the receding bluffs soon thereafter.
The years passed and the erosion continued. During the summer of 1948 once again the Outermost House found itself in danger. This time not only was it moved inland 200 yards, it was also reinforced and re-shingled to better prote