I live in a village named "HUIZEN" , situated about 25 kilometers from Amsterdam.   In former times Huizen was a real fishervillage, laying at De Zuiderzee just as Volendam, Marken, Monnikendam, and all that villages round de Zuiderzee. The inhabitants of the villages lived from fishing. In that time the Zuiderzee was still a salt sea, a large, shallow inlet of The Northsea. It was a dangerous sea and many ships has been wrecked and were sinking there and many widows stayed behind....................

I work at a primary school in Almere, so I take the A27 and in about 20-25 minutes i'm at my work. I drive in the right direction, there's not too much traffic in the morning, but on the other side of the road there is and in the afternoon just the same, but than contrary.

And now the story of the "Zuiderzeewerken" where we made land out of the sea! I'm proud of that!!!

The Zuiderzeewerken (Zuiderzee Works) are a human-made system of dams, land reclamation and water drainage works, and the largest hydraulic engineering project undertaken by the Netherlands during the twentieth century. The project involved the damming off of the Zuiderzee, a large, shallow inlet of the North Sea, and the reclamation of land in the newly enclosed water body by means of polders. Its main purposes were to improve flood protection and create additional land for agriculture.

Original plans for the works date back to the seventeenth century, but it was not until a severe flood struck in 1916, that the Dutch parliament finally agreed. At this time Cornelis Lely (after whom Lelystad is named) was minister of transport and water management. He had always been an advocate of the plan and now had a chance to have the plan executed. The single biggest structure in the project was a 32 km long dam, the Afsluitdijk ('closure dike'), protecting the Dutch from the North Sea. But to test the waters the small Amsteldiepdijk was built first to connect the island of Wieringen to the North Holland mainland. Its construction lasted four years and proved to be a valuable learning experience for the much larger Afsluitdijk. When the Afsluitdijk was finished in 1932, the Zuiderzee was completely dammed off and from then on would be called the IJsselmeer. Total cost of the dam was about €700 million (2004 equivalent).

After damming off the sea, the next step involved creating new land, new polders. This was achieved by damming off portions of the IJsselmeer, and then pumping all the water out. The first polder, Wieringermeer, was dammed in 1929 and fully drained in 1930. The third, the Noordoostpolder, was not fully drained until 1942 and played a vital role for the Dutch Underground resistance during World War II, as the fresh polder offered numerous hiding places. After the war, work was started on draining the Flevolands, a massive project totalling almost 1000 km². This area is now home to Lelystad and Almere; the latter is the fastest growing city in the Netherlands (in part because of its proximity to Amsterdam). Another large polder was planned in the Markermeer, creation of which was heavily debated until plans were officially abandoned in the early 2000s. A new province, Flevoland, was created out of the Noordoostpolder and the Flevolands in 1986, thereby completing the Works.

This newly created land has led to a great change of identity for towns like Lemmer, Vollenhove, Blokzijl, the former islands of Urk and Schokland, Wieringen and others. Kuinre suffered from the change specifically because it was cut off completely from open water.

      De Afsluitdijk ( "closure dike") 32 kilometers long closed the Zuiderzee, in my next blog more about the polder. It fascinates me still every day, when I drive into the "new land", can you understand that??

More detailed info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuiderzee_Works  and all about the life in fishervillages in former days http://www.zuiderzeemuseum.nl  ( ENGLISCH VERSION)