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Transforming the Shore

This chapter examines the two intertwined forces—tourism and federal investment—that transformed how nineteenth-century Americans through about and interacted with their beaches. Coastal shipwrecks were the connective thread and catalyst for the expansion of coastal tourism and federal interventions up and down the coast. Federal efforts to control risk by preventing shipwrecks and mitigating their financial and humanitarian costs remade the physical landscape and recast popular perceptions of the American shore. Shipwrecks also contributed to the development of coastal tourism, which built on the physical infrastructure and social networks forged through shipwreck rescue and salvage. This chapter focuses on how these forces transformed one well-documented coastal hamlet, Quonochontaug, Rhode Island.