Dog Bar Breakwater panorama, from end to end!
Click panorama to view larger
Built to protect ships from the Dog Bar Reef, the Dog Bar breakwater was built on top of the ledge. The half mile long breakwater is seven and a half feet above mean high water and ten feet wide, constructed of 231,756 tons of Cape Ann granite over a substructure of rubble. Built by the Army Corps of Engineers between 1894 and 1905 at a cost of only $300,000.00, I wonder what it would cost to build a granite breakwater such as Gloucester’s in today’s economy?
For more interesting history about the Dog Bar Breakwater visit Lighthouse Friends and Terry Weber’s fun facts about the Breakwater.
Good Morning Gloucester 
Very interesting – was much cheaper when the granite was milled out of the local quarries….I was researching some and found this may give a slight idea here? 🙂 Dave & Kim 🙂
The link it does have some cost for break wall back in the old days very nice post history (dog Bar).
http://vintagerockport.com/2011/01/17/putting-the-top-on-the-sandy-bay-breakwater-circa-1912/
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Very interesting, thanks Dave for the link.
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Nice pictures and history, Kim.
To your question about the cost: the Consumer Price Index from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics is one way of comparing the value of money from different time periods. Their historical data only go back to 1913, but that’s pretty close to the date when the Dog Bar was finished. When I ran the numbers it came out that $300,000 then is worth about $9 million now, according to them. I very much doubt that the breakwater could be built for that much, the environmental study alone would be hundreds of thousands.
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Thank you Greg for the great information! I think no matter how accurate the comparison from different time periods, today infrastructure costs and overruns are so inflated, I wonder if it would even be built. Our welcoming harbor would be so very different without the Dog Bar Breakwater.
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