Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
My favorite dead New England business is the Pacific Guano Company., which had a big factory (exactly where you now get the ferries to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket) in the Woods Hole section of Falmouth. There it processed bird, er, waste from Pacific islands into high-grade fertilizer by mixing it with menhaden and other fish. It stank, but made some local fortunes in its 1859-1889 life. (Some of my ancestors, descendants of Cape Cod Quakers, were investors.)
A shortage of guano and the arrival of new, man-made chemical fertilizers ended the company’s short life and the Yankee owners moved on to other trades, such as building big summer places for the new rich from Boston.
New Englanders have usually known when to move on from aging industries, such as textiles and shoes, to advancing ones, such as electronics, computer software, pharmaceuticals, investment firms (e.g., Fidelity) and even oyster aquaculture.
