(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.)