73 years later, Cape Cod removes barrier blocking native trout’s return

Trout representative image For more than seven decades, a quiet stream in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, has been held back by a concrete barrier. Fresh Brook, once known as “Trout Brook,” was a thriving habitat for native sea-run brook trout, locally called “salters”, until the early 1950s. Anglers from across the country travelled to Cape Cod to fish in its one-and-a-half-mile stretch of cold, spring-fed water. But a series of construction projects, culminating in the installation of a concrete weir in 1953, cut off the trout from their ancestral spawning grounds and turned a lively ecosystem into a stagnant pool.Now, after years of planning and partnership, that weir is set to be removed. The Fresh Brook Restoration Project, led by Cape Cod National Seashore and a coalition of partners, aims to restore the stream’s natural flow, bring back tidal influence and reintroduce a self-sustaining population of sea-run brook trout for the first time in more than 70 years, according to National Park Service.A stream with a rich historyFresh Brook’s story stretches back centuries. Along its banks once stood Fresh Brook Village, a bustling community of farmers, mackerel fishermen and their famil...