At this museum, the tide brings in odd treasures that become a lasting lesson

"It's not your typical exhibition space. A colorful blast of stuff covers every inch of the walls: Little green army guys, broken rusty knives, hairbands and hard hats. Tons more isn't even recognizable. "Yes, it's a lot!" laughs museum founder Corinn Flaherty, "because the stuff keeps washing up." Washing up - specifically - on the quarter-mile stretch of beach on Plum Island, about an hour north of Boston, where Flaherty walks her dog."

""The beach was absolutely a sheet of ice," she recalls. "There was nothing on it except this one doll head that was upright in the sand. Frozen. And alone." Flaherty says she carefully "wrestled it out of the ice and took it home." Ten years later, she's still not sure why. "It spoke to me," she shrugs, tenderly holding that same doll head, and readily conceding that it is indeed a bit creepy."

Corinn Flaherty collects found objects washed up on a quarter-mile stretch of Plum Island beach. The collection began in the Snowmageddon winter of 2015 with a 1940s-era doll head. Dozens of plastic and metal items now cover museum walls, including toy soldiers, rusty knives, hairbands and hard hats. The assemblage moved from Flaherty's home to a studio in Amesbury and opened in 2021 as the Plum Island Museum of Lost Toys & Curiosities. The installation functions as a graveyard for once-loved objects and as a stark reminder of human consumption and the longevity of plastic waste.

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