Rachel Carson's Bay State days

By Beth Daley

If you are of a certain age - or lean toward the trees - you’ve no doubt read Rachel Carson’s 1962 book "Silent Spring," which alerted the US public to the devastation wrought by DDT and other pesticides on the environment. By many accounts, Carson’s book launched a new age of environmentalism in the country that led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Rachel Carson in Woods Hole shortly after her book "The Sea Around Us" was published (photo by Edwin Gray. Courtesy of the Lear/Carson Collection, Connecticut College)

Yet I never knew the close relationship Carson had to Massachusetts. I knew she has a federal wildlife preserve named after her in southern Maine – and also had a summer cottage near Boothbay Harbor – but she also had strong ties to Plum Island and Woods Hole.

At the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Madison, Wis., two weeks ago, I met Bill Souder, a Pulitzer-prize finalist and environmental author who has a contract with a Random House imprint to write book about Carson to celebrate the 50th anniversary of "Silent Spring." The working title is "Days of the World, Years of the World: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson."

Souder – along with some reference material from the federal government and local research institutions – gives insight into Carson's Bay State days. After graduating from Pennsylvania College for Women, Carson spent six weeks in 1929 as a research zoology investigator at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.

Three years later as a Johns Hopkins University graduate student, she returned to MBL to conduct embryological research on bony fish. She returned almost every year, in large part to make use of the institution’s scientific library, according to Souder.

By 1936, Carson was working for the US Bureau of Fisheries (today called the US Fish and Wildlife Service) in Washington, D.C., rising to become chief editor of the agency’s publications. She often would travel to newly established federal refuges to write pamphlets on wildlife and conservation in them. Carson first went to the newly formed Parker River Wildlife Refuge in Newburyport in 1946, later calling it "New England's most important contribution to the national effort to save the waterfowl of North America."

An e-mail from Souder notes Carson “was accompanied by Fish and Wildlife Service illustrator Kay Howe, who was also a close friend. They stayed at an inn in Newburyport and made daily expeditions to Plum Island with the refuge manager, traveling by car and on foot through the dunes. They were engaged mainly in observations of birds and habitat improvements underway there.”

In 1949, Carson and another research woman scientist took a 10-day trip on the agency’s research vessel, The Albatross III, from Woods Hole to the cod-rich grounds of Georges Bank more than 100 miles offshore. According to the Souder, Carson drew on that experience for parts of her second book, the hugely successful "The Sea Around Us" – published in 1952.

Rachel Carson in Woods Hole (Photo by Mary Frye, Courtesy of the Lear/Carson Collection, Connecticut College.)

Carson was fascinating on many fronts – not the least as a mass market author. Her books were serialized in The New Yorker magazine, creating a natural audience for her books when they came out, Souder says.

I looked for stories in our archives about Carson and Massachusetts. Few came up. Souder notes Carson’s Plum Island relationship “is probably forgotten.” People I queried didn't even know about her Woods Hole link.

Now they do.