Changing Coastline

Building Within the Park: The Dune Shacks

Along the hook of the Cape, on the fringes outside of Provincetown, there is a section of barrier dune that is home to a series of rustic structures, known as the Dune Shacks. These shacks were built by a community of primarily artists and writers who sought the remoteness and natural beauty of the outer edge of the Cape to fuel their creative pursuits and have been used by various literary and artistic giants including Eugene O’Neill, Jack Kerouac, Tennessee Williams, Jackson Pollock, and Norman Mailer. These simple structures reside along a stretch of dunes about three miles long that is referred to as “liquid earth”,¹ since it is constantly changing as the dunes grow and recede. This particular barrier dune is a reminder of the dramatic impact that the water and wind can have upon the landscape.

In evaluating the viability of structures to be located within the National Seashore, the Dune Shacks provide an excellent model to evaluate ways in which a community can live within the seashore and accommodate coastal changes. There are about nineteen shacks, which are simply constructed; many have not until recently had running water or electricity and are thus inhabited only seasonally from the spring to fall. During the rest of the year many residents live in the surrounding towns on the Cape. The Dune Shacks are perhaps the most moved structures within the National Seashore since “most Dune Shacks, perhaps all of them, have been moved at least once during their lifetimes to save them from falling into the sea or being buried under the dunes”.⁷ The Dune Shacks have been built and managed in a very particular way to allow for the changing nature of the dunes and their need to be more mobile than a typical home.

All along the Eastern seaboard, in coastal communities, the tendency is to heavily modify the coast to the suit the needs of development. Using concrete, breakwaters and barriers to allow for homes to be built, the coastline is stunted to allow natural processes to occur like erosion.  In contrast to this, the intention behind the design of these shacks was to construct a simple structure that would interact fluidly with the changing landscape. Shack dwellers have to be aware of subtle shifts in the environment and stabilize the surrounding dunes only through non-invasive, low-tech efforts, utilizing appropriate technologies like sand fencing or dune grass, which are techniques that are further elaborated in Chapter Seven. Because of their “low-impact accommodations with the landscape, Dune Shacks [represent] a relatively unique experiment in human settlement on a barrier dune system”⁸ and their best practices should be extrapolated for possible application for other homes along the seashore.

Not only were the shacks structurally meant to have an organic relationship with the environment, but they also were built in a similar manner, going through several incarnations. From the time that each shack was built, it has been renovated and elaborated countless times. Many of the shacks were built with found materials, often using driftwood from the beach, giving them the appropriate designation of a ‘shack’ rather then a cottage or another type of dwelling. Each shack reflected the personal style, creativity and resourcefulness of its owner. This style of progressive construction also inverts the traditional paradigm that the sturdy home constructed in a style that is meant to last for posterity is actually at a structural disadvantage because it is not as easily relocated. The Dune Shacks are built according to a different architectural vernacular that does not value the same structural attributes as a traditional home. Ironically more traditional homes along the coastline, which are built at a greater cost will also incur more moving costs down the line, since they are not constructed with movement in mind.

When examining a community that lives in a way that is counter to the norm, the choices made by that community are too often seen as an act of resistance. The Dune Shack community should not be seen in this light but rather the theoretical binary that everything becomes funneled into being either an act of dominance or resistance itself needs to be deconstructed (Pickering 2004: 86) so that their lifestyle is not seen in oppositional terms. Because of the various encouraged avenues of public use of the Dune Shacks and the cooperation between the community and the National Park Service, their presence is not one of active opposition but rather they are an interactive site for modeling appropriate technologies and managing a vibrant, multi-generational arts community dedicated to experiencing and living in communion with the dunes.