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CCNS-HC Nickerson's Oil Works.jpg

(1890)

Nickerson’s Whale and Menhaden Oil Works.

Nickerson’s Whale and Menhaden Oil Works was founded and constructed in 1886 by Joshua Stickney Nickerson and John Rosenthal. Three years later, they built a 400-foot-long pier. By 1890, the complex was producing about 900 barrels of oil annually; in the spring from whales and in the summer and fall from menhaden, a kind of herring also known as alewife. The plant produced fertilizer made of fish scraps and a poultry feed made of whale meat and bone. Nickerson’s Works had its own whaler, the A. B. Nickerson.

¶ Last updated 10 January 2010. ¶ Image courtesy of the Provincetown History Preservation Project, Dowd Collection, Page 2095. (Scrapbooks of Althea Boxell, Book 7, Page 69.)

 

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