Shelter Island Historical Society: Featured Book — ‘Where They Go By Water’ by Muriel Weaver

Where They Go By Water details the story of the spit of land that makes up a third of Shelter Island’s landmass: what is now the Mashomack Preserve. Beginning at the beginning, this book explains how glaciers, seawater, and time formed the land we call Shelter Island. Following a natural timeline, the reader then travels forward, learning of the flora and fauna that predate human inhabitants, of the native people of the Manhanset tribe, of the early European settlers, and finally of modern Shelter Islanders and all these groups’ relation to the area once called Sachem’s Neck.

As the author reaches the end of the 20th century and the purchase of the land by the Nature Conservancy, the reader can dive deeply into records of the work done to restore and maintain the new nature preserve and into the lives and deaths of the animal and plant species that form the life of Mashomack Preserve.