GATHERED FROM MUD FLATS DURING LOW TIDE USING A SIMPLE FORK AND A BASKET, THE CLAM HAS LONG BEEN CALLED “HUMBLE,” “UNOBTRUSIVE,” AND “MODEST.” YET OVER THE COURSE OF THE LAST CENTURY THIS MOLLUSK HAS BECOME THE VERY BASIS FOR THE IDENTITY OF COMMUNITIES ALONG THE MASSACHUSETTS NORTH SHORE. AS A SYMBOL OF NEW ENGLAND, THE HUMBLE CLAM TELLS A MIGHTY STORY.
Clams have come a long way from their use in the colonial era as pig food and fishing bait. At prices ranging from $90 to $160 per bushel, these shellfish are now a luxury food enjoyed by tourists in clam shacks by the sea, and by inland city-dwellers alike. The clam’s is a story of consumers, but also of diggers, and a way of life born from the changing tides of industry. Today, the clam diggers of the North Shore balance time-honored practices and new challenges, while pulling our heritage from the sand.
How did clams become so popular?
CLAMS WERE NOT ALWAYS THE DESIRED DELECTABLE THEY HAVE BECOME. COLONISTS OF EARLY AMERICA ATE CLAMS ONLY IN TIMES OF DESPERATION. IN FACT, THEY PREFERRED TO ALLOW THEIR PIGS TO FORAGE ON THE MUD FLATS. THOUGH AMERICAN INDIANS HAD BEEN EATING CLAMS FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, COLONISTS WERE MORE INTERESTED IN SELLING SALTED CLAMS AS BAIT FOR USE ON FISHING VESSELS.
A NEW COMMODITY: FROM BAIT TO PLATE
During a summer in the 1870s or 1880s, if you had the means, your family might have escaped the heat of the city by hopping on a train bound for the Massachusetts coast. At these destinations visitors stayed in new resort hotels partaking of the fresh sea air and the local color.
“Our early ancestors here in New England were familiar with shellfish. They were the food of the poor, and they didn’t want to be identified with the poor. But during periods of deprivation here in Colonial New England, they were forced to go out and harvest clams. But over time people did acquire a taste for clams, and it came in a surprising way—and that was the development of leisure time, and the development of transportation. And also refrigeration and ice. All this comes as a confluence, and people wind up getting on trains to go to resort hotels all along the coast of New England. They take ferries and steamers out to various coastal locations and islands that had big resort hotels on them. And when they get there, the kids have to be occupied so they go down to the beach, and they start digging up clams. It’s hard to document this kind of stuff, but based upon what information we have, it is suggested that they carried these clams up to the chef, who said, ‘Yeah, I can do something with it. Instead of putting haddock in the chowder tonight we’ll put some clams in it.'” –
Joseph Carlin
Tourists, especially children, enjoyed the novelty of digging for a clam or two while sitting on sandy beaches. Before long, the clam began making an appearance on the plates at these resorts – steamed, or fried, or thrown in fish chowder.
Consumer demand at the turn of the twentieth century resulted in flats all but stripped of clams. In 1909 Dr. David Belding wrote in his
Report on the Mollusk Fisheries of Massachusetts:
“With no thought of seed time, but only of harvest, the fertile tidal flats are yearly divested of their fast-decreasing output by reckless and ruthless exploitation, and valuable territories when once exhausted are allowed to become barren. All hopes for the morrow are sacrificed to the clamorous demands of the present. The more the supply decreases, the more insistent becomes the demand; and the greater the demand, the more relentless grows the campaign of spoliation.”
A NEW ENGLAND SYMBOL: COLONISTS, CLAMBAKES, AND FRYING THE CLAM
Though early colonists ate clams only in the leanest of times, present-day Americans often hail the shellfish as an iconic food of our forefathers. In the common mythology of the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving, the clam appears on the table surrounded by turkey, pumpkin pie, and cranberries. In fact, the clam was incorporated into this myth by a group of men in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1767, who threw a “Founder’s Day” feast featuring clams. Despite this historical inaccuracy, the clam has become a nostalgic symbol in the modern imagination of the simple Puritan life, and the pioneering New England spirit.
“Now, here’s one of the myths about clambakes: they were not invented by the Wampanoags or Native Americans. I wish I could say that, because it would make a wonderful story. Matter of fact, we have no evidence that Native Americans used that practice. We do know that Native Americans all along the coast here, in Ipswich and Essex, were harvesting clams in great numbers. There are a lot of clam middens in this area. Many of them have been excavated. But what the Native Americans were doing, they would build a fire, throw the clams on the fire until they opened, and then they would hang the clams over tree limbs and let them dry out, and then they would skewer them with a piece of rawhide or bark. And then they would transport them to the Seneca Indians, up in Upstate New York, as a trade item. When [the Dutch] saw the beautiful Wampum belts that they were making with clam shells, they went and set up a factory to make Wampum belts, you know, using modern industrial tools. And of course, the overproduction of Wampum resulted in the devaluation of Wampum, and they just destroyed the industry then that they were after to exploit.” –
Dave Sargent
What could be more emblematic of New England than a clambake? The act of feasting on clams baked over hot rocks on a beach is an American tradition that arose from the same invented mythology surrounding the pilgrims’ Thanksgiving. A common but unsubstantiated legend tells how the Wampanoag Indians of coastal Massachusetts taught the practice to colonists during their initial period of contact. While the evidence for the historic origins of clam baking is not conclusive, the clambake is beloved to tourists and New Englanders alike.
Many will argue that there is no finer way to enjoy clams than when they are fried. Today, any clam shack worth its salt serves a version of this golden treat: soft shell clams dipped in batter or rolled in corn meal and dunked in a bath of bubbling fat. If people have been baking, steaming, smoking, and boiling clams for thousands of years, how did this latecomer arrive on the table?
The frying of the very first clam has been hotly contested. On July 3, 1916, in Essex, Massachusetts, Lawrence, known as “Chubby,” and Bessie Woodman came up with the corn meal recipe and the method they still use to fry clams today at Woodman’s of Essex. This invention won them credit with Boston newspapers for frying the first clam.
Cookbooks from the 1840s show that Americans were frying clams decades before Bessie and Chubby Woodman established their method. The Woodmans were likely the first to fry and sell clams in Essex, and they are one of the longest consecutively run seafood restaurants in America. One thing is certain: an afternoon at the beach simply is not complete without a steaming basket piled high with fried clams.
Local clam shacks like Woodmans of Essex, and the Clam Box in Ipswich have lines out the door on summer days and help to keep clam diggers like the Grundstroms in business.
A LOCAL TREASURE: THE CLAM AT HOME
Aside from being delicious when fried, what exactly defines a clam? “Clam” is simply one title given to many different species of shellfish from the class of Bivalvia. The clams of New England thrive in our intertidal zone, the coastal areas where sand and sea meet. This zone is below water at high tide, and above water at low tide. This ecosystem has been providing a happy home for hard-shell and soft-shell clams for thousands of years, and has shaped life for the people dwelling there.
In Massachusetts, an ecosystem called the Great Marsh makes up a large part of the intertidal zone. The Great Marsh is 20,000 acres of nutrient-rich salt marshes, estuaries, tidal rivers, barrier beaches, and mud flats extending from Gloucester to Salisbury.
“Shellfishing today is also an environmental monitor. Because it’s in the intertidal zone, and it’s harvested by people who bring it back, people can see the health of that intertidal zone. And the health of that intertidal zone is closely correlated with the health of the marsh lands. Our salt marshes in the Great Marsh are home to two thirds of the fish and shellfish that are in the ocean. Without the salt marshes and the health of the intertidal zone, life in the ocean as we know it will not exist. So, on a regulatory level, it’s really important to protect land containing shellfish, or shellfish habitat, as well as to try to promote branding Massachusetts shellfish as being a safe and healthy food product.”-
Dave Sargent
“Yes, this is what I have heard: The uniqueness of the Ipswich clam and the Essex Bay clam; clams grow best in estuaries that have an extreme tidal flow at the proper salinity. And those unique conditions exist right at the end of the Ipswich River and the Essex River. So clams just grow in abundance, and the taste of them is just magnificent because of that happy coincidence of all these variables. Yes, they grow good clams up in Maine, and when we’re short of that they dig them out of the mud and ship them down to us. But a lot of people just swear by the wonderful salty brininess, taste-of-the-sea of the Essex County clam.” –
Joseph Carlin
Call it humble, but the clam is the basis of an industry which has supported and sustained local economies for more than a century. A great deal of work goes into digging clams, shucking them, processing them for consumers, transporting them, regulating the shellfishing environment, and creating the necessary equipment for these processes.
Because clamming has historically sustained towns like Essex, Ipswich, Rowley, and Gloucester, a shell fishing culture is apparent in those communities. Those who learned to be clammers from their fathers and grandfathers carry a legacy and a pride in this shared heritage.
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