Acushnet River - The Hurricane Barrier

The Hurricane Barrier

Beginning in 1958, the New Bedford Harbor Hurricane Barrier was built from a point about one hundred metres north of Fort Phoenix, in Fairhaven, to Gifford Street on the New Bedford coast. The 20-foot high barrier continues onto land, where three large doors allow street traffic to pass through during calm seas. The longer segment continues along the New Bedford coast to just before Frederick Street. A discontiguous segment protects the top of Clark's Cove in New Bedford, roughly to the Dartmouth border.

The barrier consists of an arc of riprap and fill, approximately three kilometres long, surmounted by a service road. At the center of the marine structure is a control tower and a set of hydraulically-operated doors that can be closed, when necessary, to shut out the surge of seawater that typically accompanies a major storm or hurricane. Taken as a whole, the barrier is the largest stone structure on the East Coast of the United States.

A structure with the same purpose, the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier, was constructed across the throat of Narragansett Bay, near Providence, Rhode Island, about forty kilometres from this structure spanning the mouth of the Acushnet.