Our guest speaker, Robert T McMaster presents: Revelations in Stone: Edward Hitchcock and the Geology of Cape Cod and the Islands.

The year 2024 marks an important milestone in the history of Cape Cod and the Islands. It was exactly two hundred years ago in 1824 that the geological history of the region first came to the attention of scientists around the world. In that year Massachusetts geologist Edward Hitchcock published a landmark paper on the geology of Martha's Vineyard in a new scientific journal. Hitchcock’s insights into the island’s past sparked a revolution in our understanding of the forces that shaped the Vineyard, Cape Cod, and North America, eventually leading him to become the first American scientist to publicly endorse the theory of continental glaciation.