Does anyone know if ninigret , Quonny and Winnepaug ponds were one big pond at one time? If they were did they seperate naturally or was the seperations man made , like by putting rods through , etc?

It always seemed to me that there was so little land between Ninigret and Quonny that at one time they must have been one big pond.

Anybody know or have old pictures from way back when?

Also , when were the breachways lined with the boulders?

just curious.

I think that they have always been separated.

Potters pond was once the main breachway for point judith salt pond.. I think thats pretty neat

Shore Answer. No.
the land between them was deposited ~22,000 years ago during the end of the last ice age.

Ahhh Glacial Moraine
Gave $20 to a stripper with that name once.:drool:

A History of Oysters in Rhode Island’s Salt Ponds
From An Elusive Compromise: Rhode Island Coastal Ponds and Their People by Virginia Lee
Excerpted by Malia Schwartz
Native oysters were abundant in all Rhode Island salt ponds prior to the construction of permanent breachways. Point Judith, however, has the most interesting history. In the 1800s there were abundant oyster beds in the pond. According to Goode’s 1884 treatise on the fisheries of Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island considered using the ponds as a source of oyster seed for the large and lucrative Narragansett Bay fishery. Farmers could rake as much as 20 bushels in a morning, fill a wagon, and cart them home or to market. For a few years after the breachway was built in 1906, natural oyster set burgeoned all over the pond. In the early days, oysters grew on any hard bottom. They grew so thick off Great Island that walking there cut up a pair of boots (Bob Smith, 1978 interview). The Dykstras—one of the most prominent Rhode Island fishing families—shipped thousands of bushels of oysters by rail directly to big hotels in Newport, Narragansett, Hartford, and New York in the 1920s and 1930s. They would fish the beds in fall and winter. In the winter they cut large holes in the ice and could harvest six bushels with tongs from a single hole. Prior to World War I, Point Judith Pond was one of the most important managed oyster grounds in the state.
But the opening of the permanent breach, allowing higher-salinity seawater to enter the pond, was the beginning of the extinction of the oysters. Although at first the natural population continued to grow and provide abundant fishing, spawning declined as the ponds became saltier. Not only did oysters stop spawning at the higher salinities, but they also fell prey to saltwater predators such as the oyster drill and starfish. Soon there were no longer natural sets on the beds; spat had to be gathered elsewhere and put on the beds. In the 1930s, rowboats were filled with young oysters from the shores and brackish coves of the pond and shoveled off onto beds that were 6 to 8 feet below the surface. The oysters spawned only along the edges of the pond, where springs and runoff made the water less salty. Later, in the 1940s and 1950s, spat had to be brought in from Jamestown or other ponds that were still brackish.
A similar pattern occurred in Charlestown Pond. One argument in support of the 50-foot-wide reinforced breachway dug in 1904 was enhancement of the oyster fishery. But the salinity so increased that spawning was inhibited and the oyster crop suffered heavy damage. As the breach shoaled and its west wall eventually caved in, Charlestown Pond became more brackish and the oyster fishery recovered. Oysters were again plentiful in deep water or shoal. In the 1930s and 1940s, local residents fished Charlestown and Green Hill ponds (although Green Hill Pond oysters were smaller and less in demand), easily getting the six bushel limit every day. They were sold to local restaurants or kept in the basement all winter to feed the family. Oysters layered between wet burlap kept for months. During the Depression some local children peddled oysters door to door before school.
Without regard to the early lessons of how stabilized breachways can
effect oyster fisheries, the permanent breachway in Charlestown Pond was constructed in 1952 and the channel dredged to Green Hill Pond in 1962. In each case, a major argument for constructing the permanent breachways was the improvement of the anadromous fisheries and the oyster stock, since it was seen that the shoaling breachways were restricting the passage of migrating fish and the flow of seawater necessary to feed and fatten seed oysters. Shortly after the construction of the breachway, however, oysters could be found only in a few of the back coves where freshwater springs or streams fed into the pond. An earthen dam had to be built across Green Hill channel in order to block tidal flushing in Green Hill Pond and lower the salinity sufficiently to regain oyster spawning conditions.
The overall effect of breachways on fisheries was the demise of the very fisheries they were meant to enhance. The abundant and lucrative brackish water fisheries that yielded thousands of pounds of alewives, perch, and oysters annually were ultimately lost. In many cases, they were replaced by less abundant populations of species such as quahogs, bay scallops, and winter flounder.

Salt Ponds Watershed (http://www.ririvers.org/wsp/Watersheds/SaltPondsWatershed.htm)


http://www.edc.uri.edu/restoration/html/intro/salt.htm