Marshfield · Heritage

The Lost Summer Coast

This coast was famous once — for grand hotels and ballrooms, for the first voice ever broadcast by radio, and for storms that moved rivers. Everything on this page is published material from the guides: two heritage village guides, and the history woven through the village chapters.

Two Ways In

Sunset over Rexhame Beach in Marshfield, MA Explore by VillageThe placesMeet the six coastal villages by the identities their histories gave them — the cottage colony, the working waterfront, the village the storm reclaimed. Sunset over the South River marsh near Rexhame Beach in Marshfield, MA Explore Through TimeThe erasRead the coast in five eras — the working shore, the resort age, storms and fire, the cottage century, and the coast today — with the journeys that connect them.

Heritage Guides

Marshfield Hills Village GuideThe historic inland village: the 1853 general store, the North River sanctuaries, and the old stagecoach roads.Sunset over the South River marsh near Rexhame Beach in Marshfield, MAMarshfield Center Village GuideFairgrounds, the Ventress Building, Library Plaza, and the civic heart of town since 1862.Sunset over the South River marsh near Rexhame Beach in Marshfield, MA

Stories from the Villages

Each village guide carries its village's history. These are the stories guests ask about most.

Brant Rock & the Birth of RadioReginald Fessenden's wireless station at Blackman's Point sent the first transatlantic two-way signals — and, on Christmas Eve 1906, arguably the first radio broadcast.Venus II, the oceanfront restaurant on Ocean Street at Brant Rock in Marshfield, MAGreen Harbor & the DikeIn 1872 the town diked the harbor mouth to drain the marsh into farmland, splitting the village into Dikers and Anti-Dikers for a generation.Sunset over the South River marsh near Rexhame Beach in Marshfield, MAHumarock & the Portland GaleThe November 1898 Portland Gale cut a new mouth for the North River, redrawing Humarock's shoreline in a single storm.Sunset over the South River marsh near Rexhame Beach in Marshfield, MAFieldston's Resort EraBy 1925 Fieldston was a named resort district — cottages, a beach at Hartford Road, and the Fieldston-on-the-Atlantic entertainment complex.Sunset over the South River marsh near Rexhame Beach in Marshfield, MAOcean Bluff & the 1941 FireThe April 1941 fire destroyed more than 500 buildings — the local marker counts 446 houses, two hotels, the casino, and the post office among them — and the cottage colony rebuilt itself within the decade.Sunset over the South River marsh near Rexhame Beach in Marshfield, MA
Sunset over the South River marsh near Rexhame Beach in Marshfield, MA

A Developing Collection

Inside the Collection

The Lost Summer Coast is our collection on the South Shore's vanished resort era — the hotels, ballrooms, and summer colonies that fires, storms, and the automobile age erased between Rexhame and Humarock. Its stories run through the village guides above, drawn from our own research and the local record; the collection gathers them into four journeys and a timeline, with a map of the villages themselves. The archive research behind it continues, and the collection grows with every verified story.

Explore the Collection  Read the Village Guides

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