Former quarantine site and tuunwallen - Westerland

Today, it may seem like just an ordinary crossing of paths, with a campsite on your right. But who would guess that this place once played such a unique role: as a quarantine station, naval post, and link between land and water?

In the early 19th century, around 1806, wooden barracks were built here – a strictly guarded quarantine site for sick seafarers. Wieringen was still an island back then, making it the ideal location to keep diseases away from large cities. VOC ships anchored offshore awaiting inspection. A surgeon would come aboard to check the crew. Sick members were taken to the wooden barracks, in the hope that the illness would die out here and not reach cities like Amsterdam or Enkhuizen.

After 1876, the barracks were removed and the navy took over the site. A gunpowder depot and a workshop were added. New functions, but once again of strategic importance.

Do you see the roof of a small building in the distance to your left? That is the old gauge house, once used to record water levels. And just behind you on the other side of the main road, you’ll see a staircase. This leads to a World War II memorial.

If you continue walking towards the viaduct and look to your right, you’ll see a wide green trench. This was once planned as the route for a railway line over the Afsluitdijk to Friesland. The tracks and trains never came, but the landscape still reveals part of the plan.

Finally, one last striking feature of this landscape that you’ll spot as you cycle further: tuunwallen. These low, overgrown earth and stone banks resemble small hedges and were used to mark property boundaries. A simple but effective way to make land ownership clear.

Photo: ©Jan Wessels