The former Weston wharf in Duxbury became Bumpus Park after the King Caesar House was sold by the Bumpus family in 1946 and the wharf was donated to the Duxbury Rural & Historical Society in memory of Hermon C. Bumpus, Sr.; the house itself was not acquired by the society until 1965. Originally built by the Weston shipbuilding firm, the wharf stood beside the home of Ezra Weston I, who began building small fishing vessels nearby, and later served the family business that his son Ezra Weston II joined in 1798. Used for rigging and provisioning ships, the wharf once held five buildings, including a counting room and a sail loft, before becoming a shorter, transformed public park overlooking Duxbury Bay. During Duxbury's shipbuilding era from approximately 1790 to 1850, more than 25 shipbuilders worked in the bay and along the Blue Fish River amid shipyards, wharves, rope walks, foundries, steam sheds, storage buildings, and sail lofts. Most Duxbury ships were merchant vessels bound for ports in Europe and the Mediterranean, and by the 1840s many were deeply involved in the cotton trade, carrying cotton produced by Southern enslaved people to England's textile mills. Shipbuilding declined because Duxbury Bay was too shallow for larger vessels such as clipper ships, resources grew scarce, and financial setbacks including the Panic of 1837 took their toll; the Weston firm outlasted most others, launching its last ship, the schooner Express, in 1846 and maintaining its merchant fleet until closing in 1857.