Stone Harbor Bird Sanctuary
The Sanctuary’s History
Seventeen years before the Civil War, in 1844, the first written record appears of herons in the high dunes in the southern end of Seven Mile Island. Dr. Silas Wier Mitchel was a physician from the Philadelphia area. He had visited (Stone Harbor) as a gunner and vacationist, and during the Civil War period, made trips to the ailing wife of a dear friend, Dr. John Wiley, who was a surgeon in the Union Army. Dr. Mitchell had a familiarity with the beaches, meadows, local lingo, birds,and people of the region. The reason for visiting the beach on occasion was for a sketching party and to see the ‘boobies’ - probably a local name for herons.
As early as the late 1870s the southern end of Seven Mile Island was a “veritable paradise of birds.”
In 1871 the first real life saving station was built at 8oth Street.
“ About five years ago (1885) one of the the richest ornithological fields open to collectors was Seven Mile Island in Cape May County, New Jersey, a beautiful island, over seven miles long and a quarter of a mile to a mile wide, densely covered with cedar, oak, pine, holly, sassafras and birch trees, nearly every one of them covered with long pendants of usnea moss. The natural advantages offered here for nest building are unsurpassed.”
HIDDEN TREASURES
A very special, very old holly tree!
A fresh water pond and meadow!
A Maritime Forest nestled on fourteen foot high dunes, just as it was hen Captain Stone first landed...
