Catching river herring was a common activity on Cape Cod from Wampanoag times. Although Centerville hosted few European immigrants before the early 1800s, local entrepreneurs hoped to establish a herring-catching business, so they excavated a connection between the Craigville salt marsh and Long Pond sometime around 1740. The excavators’ identity and exact dates are lost to history. They used a gully that runs along the east side of today’s St Francis Xavier Cemetery up to Pine Street at its intersection with Herring Run Drive. The run was not successful, reputedly because the soil was too sandy and the high, steep banks often caved into the run, blocking water flow and herring passage. Whether it extended up to Lake Wequaquet is unknown.
Centerville before 1800 was called “Chequaquet” or “South Side” and very rural (first European grave was 1743), so likely no permit for the original run was given by the Barnstable government. The financial failure of the run may also account for the absence of historical and map documentation.
The deep gully remains today and is visible from the cemetery and from Maureen Road, an extension of Katherine Road off Pine Street. Standing near the aluminum guard rail on Pine Street, one can see the gully has been filled to the south for a short distance. Beyond the filled area, the gully is deep and overgrown. There may have been a bridge on Pine Street when the herring run was operating, so that water could flow out of Long Pond toward the Craigville salt marsh. A large amount of filled earth was later installed to cover the original herring run. A lot of earth can be moved in 300 years. A neighbor who is more than 100 years old and learned to swim in Long Pond has no memory of the original run.
Looking north down Herring Run Drive toward Long Pond, we see that the elevation of Pine Street is 10 or more vertical feet above the Pond level. That would not allow water to flow out of Long Pond into the run. There is a gully along the west side of Herring Run Drive which may be the location of the old run. Old maps at Sturgis Library from 1795, 1835, and 1856 do not show a herring run out of Wequaquet or Long Pond.
After the Civil War, a group of unemployed veterans dug a new herring run, using the route we see today. This run goes up to Long Pond then to Lake Wequaquet, and the excavating team was paid $100. An 1893 USGS map shows a herring run leaving Wequaquet, but it diverts east along today’s Strawberry Hill Road, bypassing Long Pond completely. That seems like nonsense, but it is at least downhill.
The run today hosts thousands of herring in their annual spawning. They first swim up to Long Pond in early April. Most arrive at Long Pond in the hours around dawn, and we see few in daylight hours. This year (2024) we counted over 5,000 migrating into Long Pond, and saw an even larger number as they left for the ocean in mid-May. In both 2021 and 2023, our visual count was 10,000. From that data, the state Department of Marine Fisheries estimated our river herring migrant population in Long Pond and Lake Wequaquet to be over 200,000.
There are few public places to observe the herring migration today. There is a weedy viewing area on the south side of Pine Street in the Barnstable Land Trust property, and south of busy Phinney’s Lane where the run passes under the road. Parking is challenging at both places.
