The Foundation owns and operates the only remaining commercial cranberry bog on the island at the Milestone Bog. In addition to continuing the tradition and history of 200 years of cranberry framing on Nantucket, the Foundation is also committed to preserving the fragile wetlands, hardwood forests and open spaces surrounding the bog as part of its overall mission of protecting the island’s fragile and unique ecosystems.
The cranberry, along with the blueberry and fox grape, is one of North America’s three native berries that are commercially grown. Cranberries were first used by Native Americans, who discovered the wild berry’s versatility as fabric dye and healing agent and food. By mixing mashed cranberries with trimmings of meat and melted fat, they made a survival food called pemican. They also believed in the medicinal value of the cranberry, using the berry in poultices to draw poison from wounds. Native Americans also taught early settlers, including the Pilgrims, about the properties and benefits of this unique fruit. The name “cranberry” derives from the Pilgrim name for the fruit, “craneberry,” so called because the small, pink blossoms that appear in the spring resemble the head and bill of a Sandhill crane. According to folklore, cranberries were given to the Pilgrims to be served at the first Thanksgiving meal in 1620.
Cultivation of the cranberry began around 1816, shortly after Captain Henry Hall, of Dennis, Massachusetts, noticed that the wild cranberries in his bogs grew better when sand blew over them. Hall began transplanting his cranberry vines, fencing them in, and spreading sand on them himself. When others heard of Hall’s technique, it was quickly copied and commercial cranberry farming in the US was born. Legend has it that Captain Hall also discovered the “bouncing’ method of sorting good berries from bad when he noticed that good berries bounced when dropped down a flight of stairs and bad berries did not. The discovery that cranberries have a small pocket of air inside of them also helped in revolutionizing the “wet” process of harvesting that relies on the berries to float to the surface of a flooded bog (see our section on harvesting).
Cranberries have been grown on at Milestone Cranberry Bog since 1857 and were an important part of the Island’s economy until just prior to World War II. The Nantucket Conservation Foundation’s stewardship of the Island’s only remaining commercial cranberry bog began in 1968, when Roy Larsen, Walter Beinecke, Jr., and Arthur Dean joined forces to purchase the assets of what was then known as Nantucket Cranberries and incorporated the Milestone Road Cranberry Bog’s total of nearly 1,000 acres into the holdings of the Foundation. In 1980 the Foundation decided to retain ownership of the land but lease the cranberry operations out to Northland Cranberries. The bogs were ably tended by Northland but the economics of renting the land, growing the fruit, and shipping off-island proved to be too much for the Wisconsin based company and in 1992 the Foundation went back to running the cranberry farming. Today, the Nantucket Conservation Foundation manages the vast and complex operations of the cranberry bog.


