Baleshare Causeway

A 350 metre causeway links the island of Baleshare with adjacent North Uist.

Built in 1962 by William Tawse Ltd contractors with Sir Alexander Gibb as consulting engineers, it completed the initial phase of causeway construction in the Uists, then run by Inverness-shire County Council. The link with the main island has helped maintain Baleshare's population which stood at 55 in 1991. It had fallen from 67 ten years earlier but it is significant that other formerly inhabited islands which failed to get fixed links, for example, Taransay and Scarp ­ became deserted after 1962. Scarp's school only closed in 1967, the post office two years later and the last two families left on December 2, 1971.