Eleven

A lone shack sits at the southern end of Tin City, its silvery and rusted iron panels mixing unevenly across the walls and its lower sections buried under wind-blown sand. A small wooden ladder rises to the entrance on the right side. Faded paint and rusted iron front a clean stretch of wind-swept sand. The eleven remaining shacks run along the dune ridge in a single sparse line, small against the dune field around them.

Eleven is the working count. The settlement reached its highest point at around 36 to 38 shacks during the 1930s Depression and has fallen since, through Army demolition during World War II, sand burial in the post-war years, and individual loss of buildings over time. The 2015 Worimi Conservation Lands Plan of Management locked the count in place: no new shacks may be built, and no shack may be rebuilt after destruction. Tin City is therefore a settlement that can only shrink. Whether eleven becomes ten, then nine, then less is a question of how the dunes, the salt, and the storms treat the remaining buildings over the next several decades.