Epoxy

Pamet River

Truro, Massachusetts, USA

Also known as Little Pamet River, Pamet Harbor, Ballston Beach, Outer Cape

The Pamet crosses Cape Cod almost end to end, and the Atlantic keeps trying to finish the job.

At the eastern end of this valley the dune line at Ballston Beach is the lowest point on Truro's ocean shore, and the ground behind it sits below high tide. Storms have come over the top repeatedly. Overwashes were recorded in 1978, 1991 and 1992, and in February 2013 a blizzard pushed seawater across the dune and up the valley toward Route 6. Winter Storm Juno did it again in 2015 through an opening measured at 205 feet, wider than the one before it.

The town has studied whether one of these will eventually stay open. Its conclusion was no. There is not enough depth in the valley for a channel to hold, so the Cape is not about to be cut in two here.

The still water in the upper valley is not natural either. A dike was built across it in the 1800s to keep the tide out and turn salt marsh into farmland.

Details

Feature: River
Build: Epoxy
Material: Solid Maple
Colour: Ocean Blue
Size: 10-1/2" x 16"
Completed: April 2025

Shop this Style $350.00 CAD

How this one was made

Two wedges of open water, Cape Cod Bay on the left and the Atlantic in the top corner, each dammed along its shore and against the board edge. Straightforward enough. Then the river.

The Pamet runs the full width of the board and for most of that distance it is a single meandering line no wider than the dam holding it. Both dam walls run parallel a hair apart for the length of it, following every bend, and there are tributaries coming off it that are finer still. Below the harbour it comes apart into marsh channels that double back on themselves. This is the finest and longest continuous dam run we have done.

Two colours, the water and the engraved text. Maple gives the least sanding margin of the woods we use, and on a board where most of the surface is bare and the pour is this thin, there is nowhere for a mistake to hide.