The history of Wieringen

Plans to close the Zuiderzee

Shortly after Worldwar 1, Wieringen found itself in the spotlights, due to the exile of the German ex-crownprince on the island. After this eventful period Wieringen would have sunk back into oblivion, if the work on the project to close off the Zuiderzee had not started a few years later. For more than 100 years plans had been made to close the inland sea off, and regain land from it. Technical and financial problems were for a long time the reason why it stayed with plans, but due to the floods of 1917 politicians gave the green light for the project in the 1920's. The choice fell on the plan of ir. Lely, who as important politician could do some serious lobbying for his project. The plan comprised of dikes being constructed from North Holland to Wieringen, and from Wieringen to the Friesland province. In the Zuiderzee 5 polders were to be made, the first of which would connect Wieringen further to the mainland of North Holland: the Wieringermeer.

More info on the different land-regaining plans on a separate page.

The work starts

Click for enlarged photo

In 1924 construction of the "Korte Afsluitdijk", the short closingdike from Van Ewijcksluis to the most western point of Wieringen. This first part of the project was also meant as practice for the real thing, the 30 kms dike from Wieringen to Friesland. Soon was found out that practice was needed, for the Korte Afsluitdijk-project almost failed. Tests had shown that on the Van Ewijcksluis-side was a layer of peat. Calculations by the engineers showed that the peat-layer would be firm enough to hold the weight of the dike. It turned out that the calculations were wrong. Every load of clay disappeared in mud. On both sides of the dike to be, ground was lifted, which eventually formed a swamp area, now a nature reserve. When all peat had been pushed aside, construction could continue, but this little error had caused the constructor to go bankrupt. In 1926 the Korte Afsluitdijk was finished. Shortly after that work started on the Wieringermeer and the "real" Afsluitdijk.

The effects for Wieringen

A rather bad quality picture of the works	All of this had great consequences for the Wieringer society. In only a few years time its population doubled by the influx of workers from all over the country. This was surely a great boost for the local economy, but it also caused a very sudden end to many local traditions, including the local dialect. On the other hand this meant that Wieringen could finally catch up with the rest of the country. Wieringen no longer was an isolated and backward region. Today one can hardly imagine how the thirty kilometres long dike has been made. All work, including heavy ground moving and placement of granite rocks, has been done manually.
	< Workers placing basaltblocks in the dike. Click to enlarge photo
Huge numbers of people have worked on the dike, especially when after the worldwide crisis of 1929 the Afsluitdijk became a project to create new employment. It must have looked like a Charlton Heston bible-epic, scenes of workings roaming around, together creating a new wonder of the world. Most of the workers were housed in sheds or in small houses, some of which stand to this day. The engineers and supervisors were taken care for a lot better. 4 Large villa's were built for them, 1 in Westerland, 2 in Hippolytushoef and 1 in Oosterland. The villa's were meant as office and parts were used for the engineers' families as well. To give you an idea of the size of them: the largest one, in Oosterland, has been used as a youthhostel until it was closed last year. Fortunately the luxurious housing of the engineers did not make them feeling upper class. Some of them even gave the local youth and other interested some form of technical education. They believed in raising the standards of life for the ordinary people and therefore organised free classes in mathematics, physics, building and landmeasuring. On Wieringen, where there was only the most basic form of education available, a great want for knowledge existed, and it is more than certain that some of the pupils of those classes have used what they learned there as a stepping stone for their future careers. But as sudden as it started this project ended again when the Afsluitdijk was finished.

1932: the work is finished

May 28th 1932 was the big day: the completion of the dike. For five long years dikes from both sides slowly approached each other, and on this day the last freights of clay and stone closed the dike and connected the two ends. The closure would change a lot of things. First of all the Zuiderzee, no longer a sea, was renamed to IJsselmeer; the Zuiderzee-fishing industry collapsed because of the change of currents and certain species of fish disappearing. Only in Volendam, Urk and Wieringen a fishing community survived, mainly because they fished in open sea and not in the Zuiderzee. The Afsluitdijk also meant that you could get much faster to Friesland from North-Holland. A begin was made to regain large pieces of land from the sea, and most important, certainly for this story, Wieringen had undergone the greatest changes in its history. No longer an island local economy could expand, finding new markets on the mainland. The smarter children could continue their education more easily, now there was a good connection to cities as Den Helder and Alkmaar. For a long time there were plans to make a railroad over the Afsluitdijk, but soon it was apparent that traffic by automobile showed enormous growth and priority was given to building a motorway. Later the astronomically high costs no longer justified making the railroad and the reserved strip of the dike was turned in to a second lane for the motorway. The railroad-that-never-was is still the cause for a curious sight on Wieringen. a strip of land, parallel to the N99 road from Den Oever to Den Helder has been waiting for the railroad for more than 70 years now. Near Westerland some preliminary work was even done by diggin a ditch for the railroad track, so that the railroad would lie level. Only in very recent years the land can be used for other purposes, and slowly the memories of the never existing railroad fade away. Until recently this seemed a lot of wasted money, but now in 1999, more than 70 years later, the motorway is partly moved into the railroadditch. (See webpage by the constructor) This way two scars in the Wieringer landscape are removed.

An old picture of the monument on the Afsluitdijk. The inscription on it says: A people that lives, builds its own future