The Project Gutenberg eBook of Cape Cod : its natural and cultural
history, by Robert Finch
Title: Cape Cod : its natural and cultural history
A guide to Cape Cod National Seashore, Massachusetts
Author: Robert Finch
Release Date: May 30, 2023 [eBook #70885]
Language: English
Produced by: Steve Mattern, John Campbell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPE COD : ITS NATURAL AND
CULTURAL HISTORY ***
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
The main text of this handbook is in Parts 1 and 2. There were many
2-page information segments inserted throughout this text. In this
etext these fourteen inserts have been moved to the end of Part 2,
to improve readability of the main text. Part 3 consists solely of
a further set of 1- and 2-page informational inserts.
Each insert is separated by a line of # hash marks.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
Bold text is denoted by =equal signs=.
Illustrations without captions have descriptive text added by the
transcriber and placed in (round brackets.)
Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added,
when a predominant preference was found in the original book.
The Table of Contents in the Frontmatter has been augmented by the
transcriber to include fourteen entries in Part 2 for “A Glacial
Base”, and the other informational inserts.
The following minor changes have been made to the original text:
Frontmatter: ‘along the the Cape’ replaced by ‘along the Cape’.
Pg 54: ‘and others fishes’ replaced by ‘and other fishes’.
Pg 93: ‘chower is made’ replaced by ‘chowder is made’.
Pg 112: ‘Everett 66-67 dunin’ replaced by ‘Everett 66-67 dunlin’.
Cape Cod
Official National Park Handbook
[Illustration: =Front cover=: _Nauset Light hovers over an eroding
cliff facing the Atlantic Ocean in Eastham_.]
Handbook 148
Cape Cod
Its Natural and Cultural History
By Robert Finch
A Guide to Cape Cod
National Seashore
Massachusetts
Produced by the
Division of Publications
National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior
Washington, D.C.
_Using This Handbook_
The Cape Cod peninsula extending into the Atlantic Ocean off
Massachusetts is one of America’s prime coastal recreational areas.
Cape Cod National Seashore, managed by the National Park Service,
extends for 40 miles along the Cape’s outer arm between Chatham
and Provincetown. In Part 1 of this handbook, author and longtime
resident Robert Finch introduces the reader to the Cape’s rich
cultural and natural history and to the National Seashore. In the
three chapters of Part 2, Finch more closely examines the land, the
sea, and the transformations that have taken place in recent years.
Pictorial features on various Cape aspects supplement these chapters.
Part 3 presents concise travel guide and reference materials,
including a full-color map.
National Park Handbooks are published to support the National
Park Service’s management programs and to promote understanding
and enjoyment of the more than 360 National Park System sites.
Each handbook is intended to be informative reading and a useful
guide before, during, and after a park visit. The handbooks are
sold at parks and can be purchased by mail from the Superintendent
of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC
20402-9325.
=Part 1= =A Fragile Coastal Retreat= =4=
A Cape for All Seasons 7
=Part 2= =A Great Arm in the Sea= =20=
A Sliver of Sand 23
The Bountiful Sea 45
The Cape’s Transformation 69
A Glacial Base 26
The Restless Shore 28
Wampanoag Indians 32
Pilgrims First Landing 34
The Cape Cod House 38
Whaling’s Heyday 48
Cape Codders and the Sea 50
Fisheries 54
Saltworks 56
A Coastline Littered With Shipwrecks 60
Lighthouses and Lifesaving 62
Two Henrys: Thoreau and Beston 72
The Cranberry Bog 74
Marconi’s Wireless Station 78
=Part 3= =Guide and Adviser= =84=
Visiting Cape Cod 86
Map of the National Seashore 88
The National Seashore 90
Water Activities 92
Whale-Watching 94
Recreation Ashore 96
Birdwatching 98
Orleans, Brewster, and Chatham 100
Eastham and Wellfleet 102
Truro and Provincetown 104
Nearby Attractions 106
Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket 107
Safety, Other Management Concerns 108
Armchair Explorations 109
Index 110
[Illustration: =Preceding pages=: _The sun sets over Provincetown
and the towering Pilgrim Monument. Such tranquil scenes can be
misleading, for the Cape is a place of shifting sands and struggling
grasses._]
Part 1
A Fragile Coastal Retreat
[Illustration: (Grasses on a sand dune.)]
[Illustration: _Summer, fall, winter, spring, the interaction of the
sea and the land is clearly evident on Cape Cod’s Outer Beach._]
A Cape for All Seasons
Majestically eroded, the great glacial bluffs of Cape Cod’s outer
beach rise from the open Atlantic, separating the ocean from Cape
Cod Bay. Its many-colored sands and clays flow grain by grain, or
in sudden shelving slabs, to replenish the shore below. The beach,
broad and gently sloping in summer, short and steep in winter,
arcs northward for more than 20 miles, giving the walker a curved
prospect two or three miles ahead at most. And always, coming onto
the shore and reforming it, with measured cadences in calm weather,
with awesome fury during northeast gales, is the sea. Here, as Henry
Beston put it, “the ocean encounters the last defiant bulwark of two
worlds.” There is no other landscape like it anywhere.
Cape Cod holds a special place in America’s landscape, history, and
collective imagination. As the world’s largest glacial peninsula, it
juts farther out into the Atlantic Ocean than any other part of the
United States. It was one of the earliest landfalls of the European
explorers in the 16th and 17th centuries. Its purported identity as
the “Wonderstrand” of the Viking sagas remains apocryphal, but it
was—as every Cape Codder will be quick to tell you—indisputably the
_first_ landing place of the _Mayflower_ Pilgrims in 1620, and it
became one of the oldest settled areas in the country.
Cape Codders early on took to the sea with a will, and they have
never relinquished it. Over the centuries there developed on this
thin peninsula a unique maritime way of life that has produced
some of the most familiar objects and images in American culture.
They include that durable architectural form, the Cape Cod house;
indigenous nautical designs such as the Cape Cod catboat; tools like
the quahog bullrake; and such functional folk art as carved bird
decoys. Cape Cod bogs produced the first commercial cranberries,
that traditional part of our Thanksgiving celebrations. The Cape’s
villages, low hills, and sandy shores are still dotted with gray
shingled windmills, looking like ungainly landbound ships, whose
great sheeted arms once ground corn and pumped seawater for the
making of salt; tall lighthouses that stand sentry on bold eroding
sea cliffs and at the entrances to low, protected harbors; stately
sea captains’ houses with roofs crowned with “widows walks” and yard
gates framed by arched whale jaws; and, from local wharves and piers,
fleets of colorful boats manned by fishermen who continue to go out
to harvest the sea as they have for centuries.
[Illustration: _Fishermen’s floats, weathered-shingled boathouses,
and catboats—Cape Cod’s coves reflect its seafaring traditions._]
Perhaps the most enduring image of all, however, is that of the
legendary “Cape Codder” himself. He appears in many guises: as a
Portuguese “banker” fisherman trawling for cod in a small dory off
the Georges Banks; a Truro “mooncusser” salvaging the booty from
an 18th-century pirate ship wrecked on the Cape’s “backside;” a
Wampanoag Indian gathering alewives, or migratory herring, in spring
to plant with her corn; a Wellfleet whaler casting his harpoon at a
right whale in the icy Arctic seas; a Yankee clipper ship skipper
from Brewster or Dennis helping to open up the China Trade or setting
a transoceanic sailing record that still stands today; a Cape Verdean
girl picking ripe wine-colored cranberries in the long rows of a
Harwich bog; a Chatham Life Saving Serviceman pulling his surfboat
through a fierce January gale to make a daring rescue of the crew
of a vessel grounded on one of the Cape’s treacherous shoals; a
Provincetown rum-runner in his weather-beaten dragger eluding a Coast
Guard cutter in the fog; an “old salt” in sou’wester and knee boots
spinning yarns in Barnstable or Rock Harbor.
These and other versions of the protean Cape Codder have been
celebrated and recorded in story and song since the founding of this
country and have become a part of our history and folklore. In fact,
few if any rural areas of comparable size have been written, painted,
and sung about so richly over the years as the Cape landscape and its
inhabitants.
[Illustration: (Boathouse and yacht.)]
[Illustration: =Pages 10-11=: _Because the Outer Cape is such a
narrow strip of land with the Atlantic on one side and Cape Cod Bay
on the other, sunrises and sunsets can be spectacular_. _Here the sun
rises over Eastham’s Nauset Marsh, which was a harbor when Champlain
explored the area in 1606._]
[Illustration: (Sea shells.)]
Still, the dominant image of Cape Cod for most Americans today is
probably that of one of the Nation’s most popular summer playgrounds.
For two centuries countless visitors and vacationers have escaped the
burdens and the routines of daily life for a day, a week, or a season
of liberation, exploration, relaxation, and recreation along the
Cape’s unsurpassed beaches, ponds, marshes, bays, pine barrens,
inlets, and dunes. Originally a summer resort for Bostonians and
other New Englanders, the Cape now receives visitors from everywhere,
at all seasons of the year. One of the favorite summer games for
Cape children is to see how many different state license plates they
can spot. Not infrequently they can get them all, including Alaska
and Hawaii—as well as the Canadian provinces, Mexico, and several
European countries. Where Cape Cod once produced seamen who sailed
around the globe to bring home wealth and exotic treasures, the Cape
has in turn become host to much of the world, providing the setting
for countless beach parties, clambakes, family outings, sailing and
fishing trips, summer romances, and increasingly, an appreciation and
enjoyment of its rich environment, history, and natural resources.
[Illustration: _Gulls seem to be everywhere, but the variety of birds
makes Cape Cod a birdwatcher’s paradise throughout the year. Along
shorelines, tides rhythmically polish shells and cobbles._]
What constitutes the enduring allure of a place like Cape Cod? What
makes more people than ever cross the Cape Cod Canal bridges at all
seasons in search of something they believe lies in promise for
them here despite ever-increasing traffic jams, crowded beaches,
the continuing proliferation of honky-tonk tourist traps, and the
ongoing fragmentation of woodlands and waterfronts by commercial and
residential development?
Over the centuries the universal and nearly perfect image of Cape Cod
as a flexed human arm has provided an ambivalent symbol for what its
settlers and visitors have hoped to find here. For the fearful yet
hopeful Pilgrim passengers on the _Mayflower_ it both beckoned and
threatened, offering religious liberty and land for settlement, yet
at the same time presenting, in William Bradford’s words, “a wild and
savage hue,” a “hideous and desolate wilderness” that many of them
would not survive.
To their maritime descendants the Cape offered seemingly endless
abundance from the sea and a springboard to personal fortune; yet at
the same time it proved to be a treacherous barrier to sea traffic,
a graveyard for hundreds of ships that fell victim to the Cape’s
treacherous rips and shoals, or to fierce northeast storms and gales.
It was not by chance, or merely to escape the wind, that most old
Cape houses are built well back from the shore. As Rowena Myers, an
88-year-old lifetime resident of Orleans once explained to me, “The
old people didn’t like to look at the sea once they were ashore. It
held too much pain for them.”
[Illustration: _Winds and tides constantly move the sands, tearing
down dunes and creating new ones._]
Today Cape Cod beckons as never before to a Nation increasingly
starved, in Henry Beston’s words, “for lack of elemental things, for
fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for
the dear earth itself underfoot.” Seventy-five million of us live
within a day’s drive of Barnstable County. During the past 30 years
the Cape’s permanent population has risen from 70,000 to 190,000, a
figure that nearly triples during the peak summer season.
Some come to walk the spacious curved length of the Great Beach of
Cape Cod, which Thoreau claimed was a place where “a man may stand
and put all America behind him” (though at many public beaches in
July and August it may seem as if one has most of America in front
of him!). Others seek quieter places like the soft pine barrens
of the interior woodlands, or one of the Cape’s hundreds of clear
kettle-hole ponds, or the dune country of the Province Lands with
its eccentric and colorful community of dune shacks—an ever-shifting
landscape of mirages and stark, unexpected beauty.
Still others find, along the Cape’s many well-preserved village
streets, in its old farmhouses and meandering stone walls of glacial
boulders, its lighthouses, fishing shacks, and aging fleets of
sea-beaten draggers and lobster boats, a deep sense of that earnest,
abiding, communal history that flourished here for so long and which
we seek to borrow to help anchor our more modern, shifting lives.
Many are attracted to the energetic and often outrageous bohemian
diversity of a place like Provincetown, or to the Cape’s many art
galleries, theaters, concerts, and museums. Some may hope for a
glimpse of the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport or a movie star on
the bench in front of a local general store. Others look forward to
a Cape Cod lobster and clam dinner (which may, in fact, have come
from the waters off Maine or Alaska) at a waterfront restaurant, or
the seemingly endless array of gift shops, night spots, and tourist
diversions (including increasingly elaborate miniature golf courses
with waterfalls and “historic reproductions”)—much of which have
little or no indigenous connection with Cape Cod and can be had
elsewhere, but which somehow seem to mean more when experienced here.
One element that seems to embrace and permeate all of the Cape’s
attractions is natural change. Change, of course, takes place in any
environment, but here on the Cape it seems peculiarly pervasive,
visible, and dramatic, particularly along the ocean shore. I like
to point out to people who want to retrace Thoreau’s famous walk
along the Outer Beach that they are likely to get pretty wet if they
try it, since Thoreau’s original path now lies several hundred feet
offshore!
[Illustration: _In stark contrast with the sandy shorelines, the
upper Herring River in Wellfleet is rich in vegetation._]
We are subject to great periodic sea changes on this peninsula. Tides
rise and fall up to nine feet twice a day, sweeping out in places in
Cape Cod Bay to reveal tidal flats over a mile in extent. Waves and
currents continuously undermine and cut into the great glacial cliffs
of the Outer Cape, removing an average of three feet a year from
our eastern boundary. Autumn and winter storms rearrange the ocean
beaches, undermining the foundations of lighthouses, beach parking
lots, and shorefront cottages, strewing the beaches at times with
the carcasses of thousands of sea creatures, from whelks to whales.
Tides and winds build and unbuild ridges and bowls of sand dunes,
which in turn march across the land, threatening to bury marshes,
forests, ponds, roads, and, in the past, whole villages and harbors.
Major storms, like that of the Great Blizzard of February 6-7, 1978,
change the very outlines of Cape Cod, cutting barrier beaches in two,
creating new islands, flattening entire dune systems, creating new
inlets, and plugging up old ones. The Cape is a river of sand into
which we can never step twice.
For whatever reasons we come, the continuing attraction of the Cape
to tourists and new residents (known as “washashores”) has proven
a mixed blessing, providing a valuable source of income to the
local populace but also bringing an increase in development and
commercialization that threatens the very things we seek here: clean
air, unpolluted waters and beaches, the harvest of the sea, unspoiled
vistas, a sense of rooted historical continuity, the free interplay
of natural forces and wild inhabitants, and the opportunity for
discovery and self-discovery in a landscape that has had a perennial
allure for the human spirit for over three and a half centuries.
[Illustration: (Fishing boat unloading its catch.)]
It was with the intent of preserving this experience for the public
at large, and not for just a privileged few, that the idea for the
National Seashore was born more than 30 years ago. The formation of
the National Seashore was unique among the creation of the Nation’s
public parks. Prior to its establishment in 1961, national parks,
forests, seashores, and monuments had been created from land already
owned by federal or state governments, or from land or funds donated
by private individuals. No federal monies had ever been spent to
create such places.
[Illustration: _Today Nauset Light alerts mariners off Eastham’s
treacherous Atlantic coast. Since the days of the earliest Indian
inhabitants, Cape Codders have plied the bay and ocean for food and
related marine products. Commercial fishing boats still work out of
Provincetown, Chatham, and Wellfleet within the National Seashore._]
On August 7, 1961, when President John F. Kennedy signed the
legislation establishing Cape Cod National Seashore, he declared: “I
... hope that this will be one of a whole series of great seashore
parks which will be for the inspiration and enjoyment of people all
over the United States.” Since then, others indeed have been created
and Cape Cod National Seashore has become one of the most popular of
the Nation’s public parks, with more than five million visits each
year. The diligent and dedicated participation of the Seashore’s
Advisory Commission, composed of 10 state, county, and town
representatives, helped park officials devise the first comprehensive
master plan for the National Seashore. Nonetheless, the “balancing
act” of preservation, recreation, and local rights has not always
been an easy or a smooth one. Debates continue over recreational
demands versus conservation, controversial uses such as beach buggy
access, and development within the park. But there are relatively few
who do not recognize not only the economic importance of the Seashore
but the critical role it has played in realizing former Senator
Leverett Saltonstall’s dream of maintaining Cape Cod “so that other
Americans, in dire need of the natural grandeur of the clean, open
spaces, will find an outlet from their crowded, grimy, urban lives.”
What you will find here is a different experience from what is
offered in our national parks and most of the other national
seashores. There is stunning scenic beauty and wildlife in abundance,
to be sure, and the chance to explore and enjoy them on foot,
horseback, or bicycle, in a canoe or a sailboat, on a guided walk, at
an interpretive talk, or, if you like, simply lying on a beach before
the rolling waves.
But there is also, by design and intent, the ongoing presence of
man, in the hundreds of historic houses, lighthouses, Coast Guard
stations, and summer cottages that remain within the Seashore, and
in the continuing traditional uses of its lands and waters, such as
commercial fishing, lobstering and shellfishing, hunting and berry
picking.
[Illustration: _On a cloudy day, the Cape’s most obvious icon, the
codfish, keeps track of the wind. With a change in the weather,
Nauset Marsh glows in autumn light._]
The boundaries between Seashore lands, private property, and
community facilities are not always obvious. The Provincetown airport
and the Nauset Regional High School in Eastham, for instance, both
lie within Seashore boundaries. Visitors are asked to observe
the “Private Property—Please Respect Owner’s Rights” signs they
encounter along many of the Seashore roads and trails. A number of
the more popular beaches require local town parking stickers. Cape
Cod National Seashore, in other words, is not so much a protected
pristine preserve as an ongoing experiment in cooperation between
the Federal Government and local communities and their residents who
continue to live, work, and play alongside, and often within, the
park itself.
Whether you choose to join the summer crowds, or seek a solitary walk
along the winter beach, we hope this handbook will acquaint you with
enough knowledge of Cape Cod’s rich historic and natural heritage
so that your visit here, whether brief or extended, will be more
rewarding.
[Illustration: (Pond with marshy shoreline.)]
Part 2
A Great Arm in the Sea
[Illustration: =Pages 20-21=: _This satellite view clearly shows the
flexed arm shape of the Cape._]
[Illustration: _Overwashes of sand become readily apparent from the
air over North Beach off Chatham._]
A Sliver of Sand
From the air the great curled arm of Cape Cod looks like a mere film
of sand, a whimsical momentary shape floating on the vast ocean
around it. Its flimsy fabric appears torn and rent by hundreds of
holes, large and small, and dozens of slits at the edges, where the
water shows through. So sheer and vulnerable does it appear that it
seems as if the slightest push might sink it beneath the sea.
This somewhat fanciful impression nonetheless contains several grains
of geologic truth, for water, in its various guises, permeates the
Cape’s past, present, and future. Created by the frozen water of vast
glaciers, shaped today by the water of tides, waves, currents, and
storm surges, this prominent hook of land is destined to succumb at
last to the steadily rising waters of the sea—all in the merest flick
of geologic time.
Some 75,000 years ago, when the Earth’s climate entered a cooling
period, the most recent of the vast continental ice sheets, known as
the Laurentide, began to form across eastern Canada. As it spread and
thickened, much of the oceans’ waters became trapped in its mass,
lowering sea levels by several hundred feet. The visible bulk of Cape
Cod is primarily the work of the Wisconsin Stage Glacier, a towering
wall of ice 10,000 feet thick that moved south over New England some
25,000 years ago. Grinding forward in rounded fronts, or lobes, the
ice sheared off the tops of mountains, gouged huge valleys through
granite hills, and plowed up tons upon tons of rocks, material, and
debris from what had been the floor of the sea.
Advancing, hesitating, and advancing again, the glacier moved as far
south as Long Island, Block Island, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket.
Then, as the climate warmed, the front edges of the glacier began to
melt; the ice sheet retreated north of the present outline of Cape
Cod, dropping rocks and large chunks of ice as it went. Then, as
cooler weather returned, it paused, and, as the flow of ice exceeded
the rate of melting, the glacial lobes once more advanced. This time
they pushed enormous amounts of drift material across the face of the
Upper and Lower Cape, creating the Elizabeth Islands in Buzzards Bay
and the rocky, morainal hills on the western and northern sides of
the Upper Cape.
[Illustration: _When the glacier melted, it left behind huge rocks,
known as erratics, scattered on the landscape._]
As the glacier began its final withdrawal about 18,000 years ago,
water from the melting ice carried and sorted finer material, forming
the gently sloping southern and interlobate outwash plains of the
Upper and Lower Cape (see pages 26-27). Braided meltwater streams
covered the ice chunks that the retreating glacier had dropped in
thick, insulating layers of outwash material. Eventually, perhaps
centuries later, the buried ice melted and the glacial debris
above it sank, creating the hundreds of kettle holes that are
characteristic of so much of the Cape’s topography.
As the great ice sheets melted, the sea level began to rise,
forcing the Cape’s fresh groundwater upward. When the freshwater
level intersected with these kettle holes, the Cape’s numerous
kettle ponds, so clear and deep, came into being. In some places
these meltwater deposits and kettle holes form a highly irregular
landscape of hills and hollows, such as the “kame and kettle” fields
of Eastham, which can be seen on the bike trail from the Salt Pond
Visitor Center to Coast Guard Beach.
Farther north a prominent series of east-west valleys cross the high
plains of Wellfleet and Truro, separated by the so-called “hogback”
hills of Truro. Most of these valleys only partially cross the Lower
Cape. An exception is the Pamet River Valley, which traverses the
entire forearm of the Cape, separated from the ocean at its eastern
end only by a fragile line of dunes that is sometimes broken through
by major storms.
For many years geologists believed these valleys were carved out
by glacial meltwater streams, but a more recent theory suggests a
different origin, based on a phenomenon known as “spring sapping.”
Spring sapping occurs when water emerges at the surface of a plain to
form a spring, or seep, which then erodes back up the plain toward
its head. There is evidence that during the final period of glacial
retreat a large freshwater glacial lake existed to the east of
Cape Cod. The surface of this lake may have been as much as 80 feet
above present sea level, providing a powerful head of water that may
have leaked through the porous outwash material of the Lower Cape,
producing springs that created the valleys we see today. However they
were formed, most of these valley beds are dry today, or else they
carry only the small, sluggish streams that constitute Cape Cod’s
“rivers.”
[Illustration: _Kettle ponds formed over time as underground
freshwater filled glacial depressions. Today the life in these ponds
can be quickly affected by humans._]
After the glacier’s final withdrawal, Cape Cod was only a rough
sketch of its present streamlined form. Its moraines, high
tablelands, valleys, and kame fields stood high and dry amid the
surrounding coastal plain that stretched a hundred miles to the south
and east, as far as the present-day Georges Banks.
The sea, however, continued to rise and advance, gradually filling
the Gulf of Maine and covering the continental shelf. It probably
reached the edge of the glacial Cape some 5,000-6,000 years ago. Now
the rough-hewn shapes left by the ice began to undergo a process
of planing, smoothing, elaboration, and elongation under the more
subtle hands of the sea. Currents, tides, and storms began to chew
away at the outer shores of the Lower Cape, creating in time what is
surely the most impressive feature of the Seashore, and perhaps the
quintessential Cape Cod landscape: the great marine scarp, or sea
cliff, of the Outer Beach.
Stretching some 15 miles from Coast Guard Beach in Eastham to Head
of the Meadow Beach in North Truro, this curved headland presents a
nearly unbroken, undulating bulwark of bold, eroding bluffs, composed
of clay and sand and ranging in height from 30 to more than 170 feet
above the beach. From South Wellfleet to North Truro the smooth
rim of the sea cliff is marked by a half-dozen pronounced dips or
“hollows,” which are the eroded cross-sections of relict valleys.
These hollows were later to play an important part in the human
history of this beach.
To the casual observer the cliff face appears uniform, lying at a
general “angle of repose” of some 27 degrees to the horizon. But look
closely and you will see that, as the Colorado River has done through
the Grand Canyon, the sea has cut open the geologic book of the
Cape’s history, exposing thousands of years of history. Alternating
layers of till—rock debris deposited by the ice—meltwater-deposited
sand and gravel, and clayey silt tell of the glacial advance and
withdrawal, of inundation and ebb by the sea. Large outcrops of blue
clay, such as the 25-foot thick “Clay Pounds” just north of Highland
Light, are the result of glacial lake sediments deposited during the
last deglaciation.
[Illustration: _Low tide bares a wide expanse of sand patterns and
tidepools at Coast Guard Beach._]
The ocean also invaded parts of the land, creating estuaries and
embayments at the mouths of these glacial valleys, such as those at
Pamet Harbor and Blackfish Creek. Several of the Cape’s “salt ponds,”
such as the one in Eastham below the visitor center, were originally
freshwater kettle ponds that have been breached by the rising sea.
As Cape Cod was being smoothed, slimmed, and invaded by the rising
sea, it was also being lengthened. Like a sculptor working in clay,
the ocean currents took much of the eroded cliff material and,
carrying it both north and south, created the elaborate forms of the
barrier beaches, barrier islands, and sand hooks that give the Outer
Cape its characteristic filigreed coastline. Monomoy Island, North
Beach, Nauset Beach, Coast Guard Beach, and Jeremy Point are some of
the more prominent of these post-glacial landforms, enclosing such
important estuaries as Pleasant Bay, Nauset Harbor, and Wellfleet
Harbor. Among the more unusual formations are the tombolos of outer
Wellfleet Harbor: the series of short sand beaches that connect Bound
Brook, Griffin, Great Beach Hill, and Great Islands.
Of all these sea-spawned parts of Cape Cod, however, the most
impressive and extensive is undoubtedly the Provincetown Hook. These
3,000 acres of dunes at the northern tip of the Cape form a broad
recurved spit of sand that encloses Provincetown Harbor, one of the
finest deepwater harbors on the East Coast and the initial port for
the _Mayflower_ Pilgrims in 1620. Some oceanographers believe that
the hook began to form as much as 6,000 years ago and has built up in
a series of roughly parallel ridges, or dune lines, widening out into
the ocean.
In the protected bays and inlets behind these elongating fingers of
barrier beaches and islands, salt marshes—one of the Cape’s most
characteristic and important ecosystems—began to form 4,000 to 6,000
years ago. Composed of a few species of salt-tolerant grasses,
primarily the stalky cord grass (_Spartina alterniflora_) and
the finer salt hay (_Spartina patens_), these green salt meadows
of the sea built slowly on the accumulating sediment deposited in
protected areas of water by the tides and land runoff. Gradually,
as the sea rose relative to the land, the marshes raised and spread
themselves on a platform of their own decay, forming thick beds of
peat underneath them. As the climate continued to warm, the Cape’s
woodlands evolved from boreal forests to the mixed pine-oak woodlands
we see today.
[Illustration: _Pitch pine is the most common tree on Cape Cod and
the only species of native pine that grows in the National Seashore.
It survives on well drained glacial sediments and stable sand dunes
and is very fire resistant. In this stand on Great Island, the
undergrowth is primarily bearberry._]
As the Cape’s post-glacial environment grew more diverse and complex,
so did the culture of the people living on it. The first Native
Americans on Cape Cod are now thought to have arrived at least 9,000
years ago. By the late Archaic Period, starting about 5,000 years
ago, local Indian groups had developed a seasonal pattern of movement
based on multiple resources. During the warmer months they settled
on the shores of bays, marshes, and fish runs, trapping birds and
collecting herring and shellfish. In winter they retreated inland to
the more protected forested shores of ponds and other wetlands.
By the beginning of the Woodland Period, about 2,500 years ago,
Indian settlements had grown even more numerous, larger, and more
sedentary. About 800 years ago agriculture and a variety of new
materials and tools had been introduced. One of the most important of
these “tools” was fire; with it the Cape’s Native Americans changed
the face of the land.
Many early accounts attest to the extent and scale of the Cape’s
original woodlands. Even at Provincetown, which must have always been
the most barren area of the Outer Cape, the Pilgrim leader William
Bradford observed “The whole countrie, full of woods and thickets,
wooded with oaks, pines, sassafras, juniper, birch, holly, some ash,
walnut, the wood for the most part open and without underwood, fit to
go or ride in.”
Archeologists now believe that the Cape Cod Indians may have
practiced a form of low-level woodland management, burning
underbrush, or wooded ridges, to provide browse for game and to
make hunting easier. Such burns may have promoted the Cape’s
characteristic pine barrens, tracts of open woodlands composed
primarily of pitch pine, a tree adapted to periodic fires.
Some glacial lands, now vanished, still existed in historical times.
There are many early references, for example, to Ile Nauset, or
Nauset Isle, a point of land that lay off Nauset Beach, perpendicular
to the coastline. It may have formed part of Cape Mallebarre, the
place of “dangerous shoals and roaring breakers” that turned back the
_Mayflower_ from its intended destination of Virginia. Nauset Isle
had sunk beneath the waves by the 18th century, but another piece
of early glacial real estate survived much longer. In the late 19th
century, Billingsgate Island, off Jeremy Point in Wellfleet, was a
flourishing 60-acre fishing community with livestock, a schoolhouse,
and a lighthouse. By 1915, however, the island had been abandoned,
and by 1942 it had vanished, the victim of gradual erosion by
currents, storms, and rising sea levels. Today, at low tide, one can
view the remains of this Wellfleetian Atlantis from the southern
bluffs of Great Beach Hill: an extensive spread of granite boulders
brought over on ships as riprap in a futile attempt to stem the tides.
[Illustration: (Capt. Myles Standish.)]
[Illustration: _In Capt. Myles Standish the Pilgrims had both a
military and temporal leader. He helped found the Plymouth Colony,
led a group that bought the colony from London investors, and served
as assistant governor and treasurer for 5 years. Metacomet, or King
Philip, shown in an engraving by Paul Revere, was killed leading the
Wampanoags in an unsuccessful war concerning land disputes with the
English settlers in 1676._]
To get some idea of the scope of erosion on the Outer Beach, consider
this: in 1990 an ancient prehistoric site was uncovered at Coast
Guard Beach; archeologists have estimated that at the time of its
occupation, nearly 9,000 years ago, it was five miles inland. More
recent evidence of erosion can often be observed on the Seashore’s
ocean side. At Nauset Light Beach, a circular brick foundation from
one of the former “Three Sisters” lighthouses (replaced in 1923 with
the present single light) is frequently uncovered in winter at the
base of the cliffs, having survived a 50-foot slide to the beach.
Farther north, at the Marconi Site in South Wellfleet, Guglielmo
Marconi constructed his original transmitting towers in 1901-1902,
set back 165 feet from the edge of the cliff. Today only two of the
foundations remain; the other two have fallen into the sea.
Few things remain in place on the edge of the cliffs or on the dunes.
They either move or disappear. Cape Cod Light, first built in 1796,
has been replaced twice; the current tower sits some 600 feet back
from the site of the original one, though only a little more than
100 feet from the present cliff edge. The present Eastham Coast
Guard Station, built in 1936, is a successor to the first one, which
succumbed to beach erosion. When the Seashore was established in
1961, more than 80 cottages existed on its barrier beaches. Today, as
a result of subsequent storms, less than one quarter of them remain.
Logs and other objects, including the remains of old shipwrecks, are
frequently uncovered by eroding dunes and beaches. During a dramatic
storm, while he was staying in the Outermost House in the 1920s,
Henry Beston described how the blackened skeleton of an ancient ship
that had been buried in a dune for more than a century “floated and
lifted itself free ... thus stirring from its grave and yielding its
bones again to the fury of the gale.”
[Illustration: _Fall and winter storms often develop quickly and tear
away at the shorelines, removing sands from one place and depositing
them elsewhere._]
One survivor of this coastal erosion is the Old Harbor Life Saving
Station. Now a maritime museum at Race Point Beach in Provincetown,
it began life in 1897 twenty miles to the south on Chatham’s North
Beach. In 1977, in the face of imminent destruction, the station was
cut in half and floated on two barges to its present site.
During the summer, the beaches of the Outer Cape present a generally
peaceful and benign aspect. A wide, gently sloping shelf of sand lies
between the base of the sea cliffs and a rhythmic, moderate surf.
The summer shoreline’s peaceful countenance encourages the illusion
that all this change and rearrangement of shoreline lies in the
settled past. There is little indication to the summer visitor of the
ferocity, violence, and transformation that visit this coast in the
“off-season.” But if one returns in late autumn, when the prevailing
winds shift to the north and the east, when the first northeasters
of the season begin to chew away at the wide summer beach, replacing
it with a short, steep winter berm, one begins to have a sense that
this is still a land in the making, that, as Henry Beston observed,
“Creation is here and now.”
In winter the ocean storms claw into the base of these cliffs,
undermining them. Along some stretches erosion is gradual, with
little rivulets of sand running down the cliff face into the sea. At
other places, especially where there are large deposits of clay, the
process can be dramatic. Whole slabs of the marine scarp may shelve
off at once, and a single stretch of cliff may lose 30 or 40 feet in
one storm. In still other areas the beach appears to be accreting,
with wide terraces of sand covered with beach grass building out
from the cliff base. But overall the Outer Beach continues to erode,
losing an average of three feet a year.
On the barrier beaches the erosion process is somewhat different,
though the overall effect is also retreat. Barrier beach dune lines
are dynamic systems. That is, they retreat and maintain themselves by
moving with, rather than resisting, the ocean’s power. Normally the
foreslopes of the dunes flatten out during a severe storm, presenting
a less steep face to the waves, which helps to dissipate their force.
Meanwhile wind and occasional storm surges that break through the
line carry sand into the estuary or marsh behind the dunes. These
deposits are gradually colonized by beach grass and other beach
plants, which begin the process of building up another dune line as
the foredunes continue to erode. Evidence of this gradual retreat can
be observed by the occasional emergence in front of the present dune
lines of peat ledges, the remains of a salt marsh or freshwater bog
that once lay behind a former line of dunes. In a healthy system and
under normal conditions a barrier beach “rolls over on itself” in a
smooth progression landward.
On occasion, however, even this process is overwhelmed by an unusual
manifestation of the sea’s power. One such manifestation was the
Great Blizzard of February 6-7, 1978, called “The Storm of the
Century.” Carrying 15-foot tides and hurricane-force winds, this
storm rearranged many parts of the Cape’s shoreline. Monomoy Island,
for example, was severed in two, and remains so today. But nowhere
were the effects more dramatic and visible than at Eastham’s Coast
Guard Beach. Storm surges breached the dune line, flattening 90
percent of the dunes themselves, carrying off most of the beach
cottages, including Henry Beston’s Outermost House, and totally
destroying the Seashore’s bathhouse and large parking lot.
Provincetown has always been the Cape community that has had to
contend most with change. During the 19th century the moving dunes
of the Province Lands threatened to bury its houses and silt up its
vital harbor. Subsequent erosion control and beach grass plantings
have so far kept the dunes at bay, but a more implacable force may
now be threatening the town.
Over the past few decades oceanographers have observed an
acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise, possibly the result of
global warming. The sea may now be rising as much as one foot every
century, which on low shorelines translates into a loss of 100 feet
inland. Nowhere on Cape Cod does thick settlement lie so close to
the shore as along the low, narrow streets of Provincetown. If
present rises in the level of the sea continue, or, as seems likely,
increase, the ocean may well claim this ancient fishing community
before the dunes do.
Meanwhile the bulk of the Provincetown Hook continues to expand
outward into the sea. The dangerous Peaked Hill Bars represent,
in current oceanographic theory, the next ridge of Province Lands
dunes in the making, rising gradually from the sea. But regardless
of such gains, or the pains taken by humans to stem the loss of
land from the sea, the Cape is inevitably losing more than it is
replacing. Oceanographers estimate that for every five acres of
shoreline lost to erosion, only two are replaced with new land in the
form of barrier beaches or sand hooks. There is little doubt that
the Cape’s ultimate fate is to return to the sea that spawned and
shaped it. At current rates of sea-level rise, Cape Cod has at best
only another five to six thousand years before the Puritan preacher
Cotton Mather’s prediction comes true, and “shoals of codfish be seen
swimming on its highest hills.”
[Illustration: Salt Marsh
_Salt hay and cord grass_
_Sea stars_
_Lobster_
_Hermit crab_
_Moon snail_
_Fiddler crab_
_Anemone_
_Moon jelly_]
[Illustration:
_Sea-lavender and honey bee_
_Bay scallop_
_Eelgrass_
_Rock crabs_
_Northern diamondback terrapin_
_Glasswort, or salicornia_
_Sea robin_
_Sea lettuce and mussels_]
[Illustration: _Schools of silversides, about 3 inches long, dart
through shallow waters feeding on plankton. They in turn are fed upon
by other marine life and birds such as gulls and terns._]
The Bountiful Sea
The first English settlers who came to the Cape from Plymouth in 1639
were farmers, not fishermen. It took several generations for them
to give themselves fully to the life of the sea, though they early
saw the potential in it. In fact, even in their farming they quickly
took advantage of what the sea had to offer. Alewives were gathered
from local streams in spring as a seasonal source of food, as well
as fertilizer for their cornfields, a practice taught to them by the
Wampanoag Indians. Eelgrass from the flats also provided fertilizer,
mulch, insulation for house foundations, and even stuffing for
mattresses. Lobsters were so abundant that they were often blown
ashore in deep windrows. They were more valued as fertilizer than
food in colonial times, and in the 18th century a petition was filed
with the General Court on behalf of indentured servants that they
“not be fed lobsters more than twice a week”!
Even more valued by these early Cape Cod farmers were the salt
marshes, or salt meadows. In a place of little natural grassland,
marshes were prized for grazing. During the spring and summer cows
were pastured on the marshes, with boys sent along to keep them from
falling into the tidal creeks or potholes, called “pannes.” In fall
the salt hay was scythed, stacked in ricks on raised wooden platforms
called “staddles,” and hauled to the barns by oxen or horses wearing
special wide wooden shoes to keep them from sinking into the peat.
The Cape’s numerous bays, inlets, salt ponds, and estuaries were also
early recognized as marine cornucopias. Foot-long oysters, scallops,
crabs, eels, flounder, diamondback terrapins, striped bass, mackerel,
and other fish were taken for local use, and clam shells provided the
lime for plastering colonial walls.
Still, despite the many uses these early settlers made of the marine
riches around them, they did not truly become men of the sea until
they were forced to by the land’s limitations and by their own
mismanagement of it. The Cape’s once-abundant woodlands were cut and
burned for farm and pasture land and consumed for a seemingly endless
array of local uses and industries: heating homes; boiling seawater
for salt; building boats, gristmills, houses, and barns; firing tar
kilns; and trying out whale blubber, to name just a few.
[Illustration: _The Atlantic cod typically weighs 10 to 25 pounds but
ranges up to 200 pounds. Its bountiful numbers sparked Massachusetts’
first major maritime industry in the 1600s. A bottom dweller, the cod
soon attracted Cape fishermen to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and
to Georges Bank off Cape Cod._]
The thin glacial soil, exhausted by repeated cropping and left
unprotected by deforestation, soon blew away. In Provincetown,
unregulated cutting and grazing in the Province Lands let loose the
dunes, which threatened to bury the town and fill up the harbor. By
1800 dune ridges were advancing at a rate of 90 feet a year. In 1847
Massachusetts geologist Edward Hitchcock, visiting the Lower Cape,
felt as if he were “in the depths of an Arabian or Libyan desert.”
Though the Cape’s soil was never very rich, the waters around it
teemed with abundance, and in the sea Cape Codders found their
true destiny. Thrust some 30 miles out into the Atlantic, the Cape
partakes of two distinct marine environments. Cape Cod Bay is part of
the larger Gulf of Maine ecosystem, a cold-water habitat influenced
by the south-flowing Labrador Current. The waters of Nantucket Sound,
averaging some ten degrees warmer, are influenced primarily by the
northward-flowing Gulf Stream.
Such a range of temperature in its surrounding waters, combined with
numerous estuaries of varying salinity, has produced one of the
richest diversities of marine habitats on the East Coast. A National
Park Service report states that the difference in flora and fauna
“between Cape Cod Bay and Buzzards Bay is greater than that between
Cape Cod Bay and the Bay of Fundy, or between Buzzards Bay and the
coast of Virginia.” Warm-water species such as whelks, bay scallops,
diamondback terrapins, blue crabs, striped bass and tuna inhabit the
same waters as do more northerly species such as blue mussels, Jonah
crabs, winter flounder, halibut, and, of course, cod.
Of all the creatures nourished by the sea, none has been more
important to the history of Cape Cod than the Atlantic cod, _Gadus
morhua_. In 1602, the English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold was so
impressed by the schools of codfish surrounding his vessel, the
_Concord_, that he named this peninsula after them, a name so apt
that, in the words of Truro historian Shebnah Rich, “blow high or
low, cold or hot, thick or thin, fish or no fish, it has hung on like
a lamper-eel from that day to this.”
[Illustration: _A few Pilgrims left Plymouth and returned to the
Cape and settled in the Eastham area. So, too, did this windmill. It
was built in Plymouth in the 1600s and was moved to Eastham in 1793.
The mill was used in producing flour. Some mills were used to pump
seawater as a part of saltworks._]
The cod has always been what Captain John Smith described in 1616 as
“the maine staple” of the New England fishing industry. More than a
century before the _Mayflower_ landed, fleets of small ships from
Holland, Portugal, and the Basque region of Spain had braved the
North Atlantic annually to fish the rich spawning grounds of the
Grand Banks of Newfoundland, salting their fish ashore and returning
with their catch to European ports. It is more than likely that the
first European visitors to Provincetown Harbor—originally called
Cape Cod Harbor—were Portuguese fishermen who came ashore to cure,
or “make,” cod on the long sandy stretches there. Some permanent
European settlements may even have existed there in the 1500s.
If the Plymouth settlers were unskilled as fishermen, they were smart
enough to sell the rights to fish to others, and in 1670 a tax on
the Provincetown fisheries was established as a means of funding
public schools in Plymouth. As Thoreau put it, schools of fish were
used to provide schools for children. As early as 1730, however,
Cape fishing captains were making voyages to the Grand Banks in a
“triangle trade:” taking salted cod to the West Indies, exchanging
fish for molasses and rum, and bringing them back to the mainland
where they were sold to finance new and larger ships for more fishing
trips. But during the 18th century most fishing remained inshore, or
close to shore, and part-time. Cape Codders remained half-farmers,
half-fishermen, and most took only enough for themselves and local
markets.
The British embargo on shipping during the American Revolution was
disastrous for the Cape’s nascent fishing industry, but after the war
it began to come into its own. Shorter and more profitable runs were
made in smaller boats, and lightly salted “fresh” fish was brought
directly back for sale in Boston. Fish flakes—low wooden slatted
platforms on which split cod was salted and sun-dried—became the
common method of curing fish. Because of its capacious harbor, “where
a thousand sail may safely anchor,” and its extensive sandy beaches
providing ideal sites for fish flakes, Provincetown soon became a
magnet for the Cape’s burgeoning fish exports. From a mere ten houses
in 1755, it boasted a thousand residents in 1802, and by 1840 the
Cape-tip community had become the preeminent fishing port on Cape
Cod, harboring more than 100 cod trawlers. When Thoreau visited its
narrow streets in 1849, he counted over 200 mackerel schooners alone.
[Illustration: _The whaler_ Charles W. Morgan _can be toured today at
Mystic Seaport in Connecticut_.]
One of the major events in the growth of the Cape’s fishing industry
was the opening up of the Georges Banks in 1821. Much closer than
Newfoundland’s Grand Banks, but just as fertile, this vast glacial
deposit, the work of the same ice sheets that formed Cape Cod, had
long been shunned because of its dangerous shoals and currents. But
the rising price of cod and halibut tempted more and more fishing
captains to its waters. By the mid-1800s a distinctive “banker”
version of the Provincetown schooner had evolved, sleeker and faster
than the old tub-hulled vessels, giving greater maneuverability on
the shoals and greater speed in getting the fish to market first for
the best prices. The schooners also began carrying dories aboard.
These small, double-ended, highly seaworthy boats were launched from
the mother ship with two-man crews, who set out hundreds of yards of
hooked lines on floats, hauled in their catch by hand, and waited to
be picked up at the end of the day. Deep-sea dory fishing, though it
greatly increased the yield of each voyage, also increased the risks
for the crews, especially if, as frequently happened, these small
rowboats became separated from the schooners in fog or squalls.
After the Civil War the industrial revolution hit the fishing market.
Greater concentrations of capital, larger boats, more expensive gear
and faster transportation for landed fish were required. Most Cape
towns did not possess the resources, the anchorage, or the facilities
to compete. They turned instead to local handlining, trap, and weir
fishing, or, as in Wellfleet’s case, began to develop local shellfish
industries. But Provincetown, reinvigorated by the arrival of the
railroad in 1873 and by an influx of Portuguese fishermen from the
Azores in the late 1800s, remained a prominent New England fishing
port until the end of the century, when the increasing demands of
capital investment and labor forced the town to yield to the ports
of Boston and Gloucester.
Today Provincetown, Chatham, and several of the other Cape towns
still support small but tenacious fleets of local draggers, trawlers,
and lobster boats. Declining stocks, smaller quotas, oil spills,
competition from foreign “factory ships,” and ever-more-expensive
gear have made it even harder for the small fisherman to stay in
business. But the independence, challenge, the hope of a “big haul,”
and the unexplainable lure of the sea continue to attract local
residents to this ancient profession, and it is likely they will
continue to do so as long as there are fish to catch.
[Illustration: _Colorful boats line up in Provincetown harbor ready
for another day of commercial fishing._]
Though whaling was never as important to Cape Cod as were its
fisheries, it nonetheless formed an significant chapter in the Cape’s
maritime history. In the early colonial days drift whales came ashore
frequently enough that they formed a portion of some Congregational
ministers’ salaries. Live whales were common in Cape Cod Bay and
Nantucket Sound, and a modest inshore whaling industry developed
in the 17th century. In fact, in 1694 a Yarmouth captain, Ichabod
Paddock, was invited to Nantucket to teach the Quaker residents the
trade. He apparently did such a good job that Nantucketers soon
became the preeminent New England whalers.
Try yards—areas where whale blubber was boiled down, or “tried
out,” to obtain the oil—were established early in the 18th century
on Barnstable’s Sandy Neck, and in 1715 that town boasted some 200
inshore whalers. But such intensive exploitation soon diminished the
nearby stocks, and by 1750 the inshore whaling industry was dying out.
As in fishing, so in whaling, Provincetown with its unrivaled
harbor became the Cape’s most important port. At its peak, in 1876,
seventeen deep-sea whaling vessels sailed out of Provincetown.
The last two Cape whaling vessels made their final voyages from
Provincetown in 1920-21. They were the schooner _Cameo_ and the bark
_Charles W Morgan_. The _Morgan_ is preserved at Mystic Seaport in
Connecticut.
One species of cetacean has had a peculiar attachment to the Cape
shores over the centuries. The pilot whale, or blackfish, is a
medium-sized toothed whale, 15-22 feet in length. It tends to travel
in tight groups, and large numbers of pilot whales frequently strand
themselves in the tidal creeks and on the shallow flats of Cape Cod
Bay, particularly in the labyrinthine channels around Wellfleet
Harbor. Scientists are still trying to fathom the causes of these
mass strandings, but to the early Cape Codders they were obviously a
gift from God, providing both meat and high-grade whale oil from the
rounded “melon” in the front of the whale’s head.
[Illustration: _A humpback whale displays its tail stock and flukes
off the Provincetown coast. Other species of whales are also commonly
seen from spring through fall, including finback, minke, and right
whales. These marine mammals, once hunted for their blubber and
baleen, now support a thriving whale-watching industry._]
Before long lookouts were posted to spot pods of pilot whales coming
inshore. Fleets of small boats would then be launched, and their
crew members would circle the whales and beat their oars and blow
horns to “help” the panicked herd ashore. In 1855 Thoreau witnessed
hundreds of blackfish driven ashore at Great Hollow in Truro, and
in 1880 a school of more than 1,300 stranded in South Wellfleet at
Blackfish Creek, giving it its present name. Strandings of pilot
whales continued to be a source of local income for Cape towns into
the 1930s, when, for reasons not clear, they largely disappeared. But
since the mid-1970s strandings have become common again; in November
1982, sixty-five pilot whales came ashore at Wellfleet’s Lieutenant
Island.
In the eyes of many, Cape Codders attained their greatest seafaring
eminence as shipmasters in the merchant marine. As captains during
the early days of the Republic, they were, as Cape historian Henry
Kittredge noted, “the first ambassadors of a young nation.” Later, in
command of the great clipper ships of the mid-19th-century, they set
a number of transoceanic sailing records that still stand today. They
also made considerable fortunes for their owners, and for themselves.
This monetary bounty was translated into the hundreds of substantial
“captain’s houses” that still stand along the streets of their home
towns from Sandwich to Provincetown. Brewster alone is said to have
counted more than 50 sea captains residing there at one time.
But perhaps even more important than the fortunes and exotic
souvenirs these ship captains brought home from foreign ports was the
broad perspective gained by their experience. It was said that many a
Cape Codder had been to China who had never gone to Boston by land.
Wives and children often sailed with the shipmasters, and several
of Cape Cod’s small villages boasted a cosmopolitan culture unusual
among mid-19th-century New England towns. Many of the retired ship
captains became selectmen in their towns, and, as Kittredge put it,
“Narrow-mindedness found barren soil in a district where two houses
out of every three belonged to men who knew half the seaports of the
world and had lived ashore for months at a time in foreign countries.”
But the sea that brought such bounty and prosperity to Cape Codders
during the years between the War of 1812 and the Civil War was not
always kind. There was a dark side to the Cape’s relationship to the
ocean, a side reflected in the numerous slate and limestone markers
in the Cape’s small burying grounds that bear the inscription “Lost
at Sea.”
[Illustration: _Over the years the sea has taken the life of many a
Cape Cod fisherman. This stone, in the Burying Ground of the First
Congregational Parish of Truro, honors Mrs. Rebecca Snow, who died
Nov. 4, 1832, and her husband, Capt. Reuben Snow, who was lost at sea
in January 1825. The inscription at the bottom reads: “Tho’ in the
dust, or in the sea, their mortal bodies rest, their spirits dwell in
paradise.”_]
The 30-mile stretch of land between the Monomoy Shoals on the south
and Race Point on the north is one of several East Coast stretches
known as “Graveyards of the Atlantic.” The Cape’s sandy outer shore
does not look as menacing as, say, the rocky coastline of Maine or
Nova Scotia. Its threats take more subtle shapes, in the form of
submerged sandbars and treacherous rips, that can easily run a ship
aground, and where in winter gales waves will pound a vessel to
pieces as effectively as if it were on solid rock.
The first recorded shipwreck on Cape Cod was the _Sparrowhawk_, an
English vessel that struck a sandbar off Orleans in 1626. Since then
an estimated 3,000 vessels have been lost in the waters off the Cape,
most on the stretch of open Atlantic from Chatham to Provincetown.
One of the most famous of the early wrecks was the pirate ship
_Whydah_, a 300-ton galley commanded by “Black Sam” Bellamy, which
broke up on the bars off Eastham (now South Wellfleet) on May 8,
1717. More than 145 lives were lost in the wreck, and of the nine
survivors, seven were tried for piracy and hanged on Boston Common.
Cape Codders early on recognized that those who went “down to the
sea in ships” did not always come back. The most deadly areas were
the shoals and rips off Monomoy—places known as “Cape Mallebarre”
and “Tucker’s Terror”—and the infamous Peaked Hill Bars off the
Atlantic, or back side, of Provincetown. Not all losses occurred
close to shore, however. Once fishing vessels began making trips to
the Georges and Grand Banks, entire fleets were sometimes caught in
furious fall northeasters, winter gales, and hurricanes. Perhaps
the worst single storm, in terms of its effects on local Cape
communities, was the disastrous October Gale of 1841. Dozens of ships
and more than 100 men were lost on Georges Banks. Truro alone lost 57
men. When Thoreau passed through Truro a decade after the storm, the
community was still in mourning: “‘Who lives in that house?’ I
inquired. ‘Three widows,’ was the reply.”
The first organized attempt to aid shipwrecked sailors was made in
1794, when the Massachusetts Humane Society began to build a series
of Humane Houses, or Charity Huts, along the Outer Beach. Located
at the “hollows” in the sea cliff for ease of access, these Humane
Houses were at first no more than crude huts, irregularly stocked
with straw, matches, and a few other items of survival that might see
a shipwrecked sailor through the night. Later they were equipped with
small boats and rope lines with mortars that volunteer crews might
use to try to reach sailors stranded offshore.
Cape Cod, or Highland, Light, the first lighthouse on the Cape, was
erected in 1796 atop the clay cliffs in North Truro. In the next 70
years others followed: the twin lights of Chatham in 1808; Race Point
in 1816; Monomoy in 1823; Long Point in 1826; the original “Three
Sisters of Nauset” in 1838; and Wood End in 1872. The establishment
of these lights significantly reduced the number of wrecks off the
back shore. But lighthouses and beacons were of little help during
intense fogs or furious northeast storms when anchors dragged and
sailing ships caught rounding the Cape could not manage to stay
offshore. More often than not ships became trapped between the outer
and inner bars, and Cape residents had to stand helplessly on the
shore as men froze in the rigging or were washed overboard into icy
seas only a hundred yards from land.
A major step in aiding these wreck victims was taken in 1872, when
Congress established the U.S. Life Saving Service, the culmination
of a series of federal measures that had begun in 1847 with an
appropriation to subsidize the Massachusetts Humane Society. Nine
stations were initially built, and eventually four others joined
them. In 1915 the U.S. Life Saving Service was merged with the
Revenue Cutter Service to form the U.S. Coast Guard.
Ironically, the sea disasters provided yet one more way of making
a living for Cape Codders. Compassionate and selfless as they were
in their efforts to save lives and aid victims of wrecks wherever
possible, they were also pragmatic. Salvaging, or wrecking, as it
was called, provided windfalls for the local populace. This practice
gave rise to the legend of the nefarious “mooncussers,” men who
deliberately lured ships to their doom with lighted lanterns on the
beach on dark, moonless nights.
There is no evidence that “mooncussing” was ever engaged in by Cape
Codders, but they were both philosophic and industrious about what
the sea threw up on their shores, whether drift whales or freighters
filled with useful cargo. During the 19th century wrecking became a
true business. Salvaging crews were organized and hired by owners of
wrecked ships to refloat or unload the vessels. Some local farmers
spent as much time on the beaches as they did in their fields. E.
Hayes Small of North Truro was one such man. On one occasion, using
heavy block and tackle, cradles and eight horses, he hoisted 15,000
board feet of lumber off the beach to the top of the 150-foot bluffs
north of Highland Light.
In 1914, however, a long-envisioned project finally became a reality
and forever changed the history of wrecks, wrecking, and lifesaving
on Cape Cod. A canal across the Cape, eliminating the entire
arduous and dangerous outside passage for ships sailing between
Boston and New York, had been dreamed of by Pilgrim leader Myles
Standish, proposed as early as 1676, and approved in principle by
George Washington. However, despite numerous government studies and
the formation of at least four private canal companies, nothing
substantial was accomplished until 1906, when New York financier
Augustus P. Belmont took control of the Boston, New York, and Cape
Cod Canal Company. Construction began on June 19, 1909, and the
first vessels sailed through the newly completed Canal on July 29,
1914. The longest sea-level canal in the world, it was widened to
500 feet in 1935, and the present Sagamore and Bourne bridges were
constructed. Today some 30,000 vessels annually sail through its
protected passage.
With the canal’s completion, the number of shipwrecks off the back
side of the Cape declined precipitously, and so did the need for the
13 manned Life Saving stations. In 1915 they were incorporated into
the newly-formed U.S. Coast Guard. Today the Outer Cape has only two
Coast Guard stations, one at Chatham Light, the other in Provincetown
Harbor.
[Illustration: Birds of the Shore
_Red-breasted merganser_
_American oystercatcher_
_Canvasback pair_
_Sanderlings_
_Lesser and greater yellowlegs_
_Ruddy turnstone_
_Ring-billed gull_
_Osprey_]
[Illustration:
_Dunlin_
_Common terns_
_Great blue heron_
_Willet_
_Snowy egret_
_Spotted sandpiper_
_Green-backed heron_
_Common eider family_]
[Illustration: _Workers flood and then corral floating ripe
cranberries in the annual fall harvest._]
The Cape’s Transformation
The Cape Cod that Thoreau visited nearly a century and a half ago was
a rural, semi-isolated peninsula with a distinct maritime culture.
Villages were small; most food and materials were obtained locally;
travel by land over sand roads was slow and difficult; and, although
many a local shipmaster had visited Singapore and São Paulo, most
native Cape Codders spent their lives within a few miles of their
birthplace, except when they went to sea to fish. Language was local,
not only in its flat Cape accent, but in a host of names and phrases
attached to local plants, animals, and weather.
Off-Cape visitors were rare and often regarded with suspicion.
Thoreau and his traveling companion, William Ellery Channing, were
initially mistaken for bank robbers. Though a steamboat ran regularly
from Boston to Provincetown, travel elsewhere on the peninsula was
still difficult. Aside from a few hardy, curious souls like Thoreau,
the only regular summer visitors to the Cape in the mid-19th century
were those attending the Methodist camp-meetings, such as the one
described by him at Millennium Grove in Eastham. “At present,” he
said of Cape Cod, “it is wholly unknown to the fashionable world.”
Yet Thoreau was perceptive enough to realize that “The time must come
when this coast will be a place of resort for those New Englanders
who really wish to visit the seaside”—though even he could not have
imagined how complete that transformation would be.
After the Civil War, the Cape entered a period of economic decline
that lasted for more than half a century. With the decline of the
merchant marine, whaling, and fishing fleets, and the opening up of
the rich western prairies, many of the Cape’s younger people left
to seek their fortune elsewhere. Hundreds of acres of farmland were
abandoned. The Cape’s population, which reached a high of 35,990 in
1860, reached a low of 26,670 in 1920. Wellfleet lost 65 percent of
its population, and Truro nearly 75 percent.
[Illustration: _In 1851 trains ran in the summer between Boston and
Sandwich. The fare was $1.50, one way._]
Ironically, it was the railroad—which initially contributed to
the decline in the packet boat and merchant marine trade—that
subsequently helped revive the Cape’s economy. The Cape Cod Branch
Railroad first arrived at Sandwich in 1848. Rails were gradually
extended down-Cape, finally reaching Provincetown in 1873. The
completed railroad linked Cape towns to the rest of New England and
made inland resources such as coal and lumber widely available. More
importantly, for the first time the Cape itself became accessible to
the region’s urban population.
Oddly enough, the first railroad advertisements enticed Cape Codders
to Boston, rather than the reverse. But it was not long before
the “fashionable world” began to discover the charms of Cape Cod.
“Summer folk,” including President Grover Cleveland, began building
substantial homes with imported lumber along the shores of Buzzards
Bay, Nantucket Sound, and Pleasant Bay.
Bird shooting became a popular sport on the Cape, and several gunning
clubs were established for vacationing sportsmen from Boston and New
York. These clubs, combined with the commercial hunting of waterfowl
and shorebirds for the food market and millinery trade, took a
tremendous toll on the Cape’s bird populations from the Civil War
until the passage of the Federal Migratory Bird Treaties of 1916.
According to one report, 8,000 golden plovers and Eskimo curlews
were shot on the Cape in one day! (The former species is now a rare
migrant, the latter presumed extinct.) At the same time, much of the
most valuable shorebird habitat was being destroyed. Hundreds of
acres of salt marshes were dredged to expand harbors or filled in for
development, agriculture, and mosquito control.
A different kind of transformation began in Provincetown in 1899,
when Charles Hawthorne opened his Cape Cod School of Art, officially
initiating the emergence of the Cape-tip as a major art colony. By
1916 there were five art schools operating in Provincetown. That
year also saw the formation of the Provincetown Players, one of the
most important small theaters in the history of American drama. Its
founders—which included George Cram “Jig” Cook, playwright Susan
Glaspell, and author Mary Heaton Vorse—produced original plays in a
shack on a harbor wharf, plays that included the early works of a
then-unknown dramatist, Eugene O’Neill.
[Illustration: _Walter Smith, 1849-1932, retired in 1930 as at least
the seventh in a long line of town criers that lasted into the late
1980s in Provincetown. Traditionally they gave out news of village
events, antiques sales, church suppers, and the like. For a fee, they
also advertised products for local merchants._]
Since then the towns of the Outer Cape have been seasonal and
year-round homes to a host of artistic and literary figures. Edward
Hopper, Edwin Dickinson, Karl Knaths, Ross Moffett, Henry Hensche,
Hans Hoffman, Ben Shahn, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollack, Robert
Motherwell, Alice Stallknecht, and Arnold Geissbuhler are a few of
the influential painters and sculptors who have worked and lived on
the Outer Cape. Literary figures have included John Reed, William
Daniel Steele, John Dos Passos, Edmund Wilson, Edna St. Vincent
Millay, Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Bishop, Provincetown’s “Poet of the
Dunes” Harry Kemp, Norman Mailer, Howard Nemerov, Alan Dugan, Stanley
Kunitz, Marge Piercy, and Annie Dillard.
A particularly rich vein of the Cape’s creative activity has been
the literary treatment of the landscape itself. Thoreau’s _Cape Cod_
(1864) was the first recognized classic of this genre. Others have
included _The Outermost House_ by Henry Beston, _The House on Nauset
Marsh_ by Dr. Wyman Richardson, _The Great Beach_ by Brewster author
John Hay, and the poetry of Provincetown’s Pulitzer-Prize winner Mary
Oliver.
After World War I the first paved roads were constructed down-Cape.
With the arrival of the automobile, the second wave of the Cape’s
transformation began. The weekender appeared. Cottage colonies began
to spring up in the towns and on the beaches. Golf courses were
built, including the Highland Links in Truro and the Nauset Links in
Eastham. The Nauset Links fairways today are a cedar forest through
which the visitor can walk on the Seashore’s Nauset Marsh Trail.
The Cape’s summer population began to mushroom, and Provincetown
in particular took on a distinctively Bohemian ambience during the
1920s and 1930s. At the same time, the descendants of the Portuguese
immigrants came to dominate Provincetown’s fishing fleet. Even
today nearly a third of its permanent population claims Portuguese
descent and continues to give a distinctive Old World flavor to this
community’s cuisine, culture, and local festivals.
[Illustration: _As the number of summer visitors increased, inns and
cottages such as these in Wellfleet were built to take in lodgers.
In 1911, Provincetown’s Commercial Street, right, had restaurants,
lodgings, ice cream shops, and other facilities for tourists arriving
by car as well as by boat._]
Having lived with change throughout their history, Cape Codders
adjusted to these outside influences with philosophy and pragmatism.
As Cape historian Henry Kittredge observed in 1930: “If whales
no longer visit their shores, rich city folk do, and with easy
adaptability Cape men and women take the goods the gods provide
them.” Some local residents began to rent out rooms in their old
Cape houses, while others added on a front porch for a restaurant,
set up a gas station or a beach plum jelly stand in the front yard,
or an antiques store in the barn. Some took advantage of less legal
commerce of the era; during Prohibition a number of trawler captains
turned to the more lucrative sea-trade of rum-running.
At least one native industry survived, in fact flourished, during
these years of decline and transformation. Cranberries had been
commercially raised on the Cape’s bogs since the early 1800s, but
the coming of the railroad opened off-Cape markets for the crop. The
cranberry, as much as the cod, became the symbol of Cape Cod. In
recent years, because of the success of modern marketing, many small
bogs that were abandoned over the last half century have been put
back into cultivation. One of these old bogs, established by James
Howe in the 1880s on North Pamet Road in Truro, has been partially
restored by the National Park Service.
The third and unquestionably the most sweeping transformation of
the Cape’s culture and landscape has occurred since World War II.
With the building of the Mid-Cape Highway and the expansion of
the post-war economy, the first waves of modern “washashores,” or
permanent immigrants, began to arrive over the Bourne and Sagamore
bridges. From 1940 to 1990 the Cape’s year-round population increased
from about 30,000 to more than 175,000, with a summertime population
that swells to 500,000 or more. Each year from 1970 to 1990 an
average of 5,000 acres (roughly the size of Provincetown) was
developed for residential and commercial uses.
[Illustration: (Commercial Street in Provincetown.)]
Though the Cape has been technically an island since 1914, it
continues to be increasingly a part of the mainland. The old,
indigenous, rural maritime culture of the Cape is irretrievably gone,
though small fishing fleets continue to go out of local harbors and
inlets. Cape Codders now live in a cosmopolitan contemporary culture,
sharing more with their urban counterparts than with the sea captains
in whose 200-year-old houses they may dwell or spend the night.
With this staggering growth and its resultant pressures on the Cape’s
resources and natural habitats, there has been an increasing movement
to protect the Cape’s fragile landscape and its wildlife. The most
dramatic and sweeping manifestation of this was the Congressional
authorization of the Cape Cod National Seashore itself in 1961, but
a number of homegrown environmental research, conservation, and
educational organizations have also been established. These groups
include the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, the Wellfleet
Bay Audubon Sanctuary, the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History in
Brewster, the Association for the Preservation of Cape Cod, and the
Compact of Cape Cod Conservation Trusts.
In part because of the work of these and other groups, general
environmental awareness has also grown. The Cape’s salt marshes are
no longer regarded as wasteland to be dredged for marinas or filled
for development but as one of the richest and most productive marine
habitats in the world. Local kettle pond shores, once built up
with little regard for environmental impact, are now recognized as
important buffers protecting water quality and as important habitat
for certain flowering plants, some of which are found in only a
handful of sites worldwide.
No longer are local whales driven ashore or hunted with harpoons.
Instead, today’s Cape Codders ply a lucrative trade running
whale-watching trips out of Provincetown and other ports, and a Cape
Cod Stranding Network has been established to aid stranded whales and
other marine animals.
Shorebirds, too, have ceased to be slaughtered by the thousands on
our beaches and in our marshes. Instead, areas such as the Monomoy
Wildlife Refuge and the National Seashore provide protected feeding
and resting stations for thousands of migrating shorebirds and
waterfowl. Each summer sections of beaches and dunes within the
Seashore and elsewhere are roped off and patrolled to insure the
survival of such local nesting species as terns and piping plovers,
and park talks and walks stress to visitors the importance and
fragility of these breeding areas.
Besides changes in human attitudes and practice, natural changes
in wildlife populations continue to take place as well. As ocean
waters warm, cold-water species such as cod and halibut have moved
farther north, while warmer-water species such as striped bass and
bluefish seem to be increasing. Sizable numbers of wintering harbor
seals have appeared in the Cape’s estuaries and offshore beaches in
the past 20 years, and during the winter of 1989-90, for the first
time ever, some rare gray seals gave birth to several pups on Monomoy
Island. Willets and oystercatchers, after a long absence, are nesting
on Cape beaches once again, and ospreys, responding to artificial
nesting platforms, have returned to Cape bays and ponds after their
disappearance during the 1960s from DDT poisoning. Other recent
self-arrivals on the Cape’s wildlife scene include opossums, house
finches, and even coyotes.
What do all these changes and transformations teach us? It may be,
most importantly, that we still confront what the First Comers
faced: the land itself, sea-born and sea-shaped. When we learn its
history and observe the age-old forces that continue to work today,
the lesson seems to be that any human occupation of the Earth is,
at best, tentative and transitory, and particularly so here. The
waves, beaches, dunes, and trees of the Cape continue to dance, and
we have begun to learn to dance with them—to understand and adapt to
the land’s rhythms, tempos, and limits—so that we and those who come
after us may continue to enjoy all that it has to offer. For it is
we, residents and visitors alike, who are today’s Cape Codders.
[Illustration: Wildflowers
_White water lily_
_Pink ladyslipper_
_Dewberry_
_Purple aster_
_Seaside goldenrod_
_Beach plum_
_St. Johnswort_
_Sheep laurel_]
[Illustration:
_Bittersweet nightshade_
_Prickly pear cactus_
_Creeping bellflower_
_Star-flower_
_Beach heather, or poverty grass_
_Beach-pea_
_Canada mayflower_
_Cypress spurge_]
#############################################
A Glacial Base
[Illustration: (Glaciation map of North America. Moraine deposits
on Cape Cod and the Islands. Glacial, post-glacial and present
topography.)]
The Wisconsin Stage Glacier reached into southern New England 25,000
years ago and melted away more than 17,000 years ago, leaving
behind moraine and outwash deposits that became the base of Cape
Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and the Elizabeth Islands (see
illustrations at right). But this was only the latest in a series
of Pleistocene glaciers that covered Cape Cod during the past 1.5
million years. Even the deposits of these earlier glaciers may rest
on a much older and more stable land form, a wide, seaward-sloping
surface called a coastal plain or, if submerged, a continental
shelf. The plain and shelf are underlain by sediments. The shelf was
exposed during the ice ages by a concomitant drop in sea level of
some 400-500 feet, but today it lies drowned under rising waters.
Even more deeply buried, some 500-800 feet beneath the surface,
lies the ancient granite bedrock that is so characteristic of most
other New England areas. There is evidence that the post-glacial
landscape looked very much like arctic tundra. Deep in the bottom of
Truro’s Great Pond, twigs of arctic willow have been retrieved with
11,000-year-old scale insects still attached to the bark. Caribou,
arctic fox, and perhaps musk ox, roamed lichen-covered plains where
white-tailed deer and red fox live today. Gradually a boreal forest
of spruce and fir took root, much like the forests that now cover
northern Canada.
Outwash Plains and Kettles
_As the Buzzards Bay, Cape Cod Bay, and, perhaps, the South Channel
glacial lobes waned, they left behind moraines (above right).
Meltwater streams carried sand and gravel that then formed outwash
plains beyond the ice (above and below). Sometimes these materials
buried large blocks of ice. In time, the ice blocks melted, leaving
steep-sided depressions called kettles that became freshwater ponds
if they were deep enough to intersect the water table. Some of
these ponds became connected to the sea and turned into salt ponds,
such as the one near the Seashore visitor center in Eastham. Over
the years peat has filled in many of the ponds._
#############################################
The Restless Shore
[Illustration: (Beach erosion. Destroyed beach houses. Parabolic
sand dunes.)]
Within a person’s lifetime, the Cape’s shape changes dramatically.
The waters of the ocean and bay and the wind constantly erode
material here and deposit it there. Major storms can create islands,
sandbars, and dunes and revamp other land forms. A storm in 1931
weakened playwright Eugene O’Neill’s home—the old Peaked Hill Bars
Coast Guard Station—and sent it into the ocean in 1932 (below).
Summer winds generally come from the west or southwest. In the
winter, the most severe winds come from the northwest or northeast.
The Outer Cape as a whole is moving westward and diminishing as
these forces tear at the landscape and as ocean currents move sand
northward and southward from about the Marconi Station Site. For
every 5 acres of sand eroded, about 2 acres are deposited up or
down the coast, thereby elongating (see map at right) the hook at
Provincetown and North Beach and Monomoy Point off Chatham. On the
bay side, sands have extended Jeremy Point southward to a point
almost directly west of Marconi Beach. An 1889 U.S. Coast and
Geodetic Survey report says that the entire Outer Beach from 1848 to
1888 lost 323,233,030 cubic yards of earth and sand, enough to cover
the 55-acre U.S. Capitol grounds to a depth of 375 feet. Similar
changes are taking place today. Some residents have seen North Beach,
the southern extension of Nauset Beach, lengthen itself from just
south of Orleans to Chatham and then break in 2 pieces in a fierce
northeaster in 1987. The breach, which has grown to more than a mile
in width, has opened Chatham’s shoreline to the full force of ocean
storms, increasing erosion and claiming more than a dozen houses
(inset below). But the breach has also increased tidal flushing of
Pleasant Bay, reinvigorating the marine community. In November 1991,
a 4-day gale breached the dune line at the head of the Pamet River,
carrying sand and saltwater 500 feet into the river.
_Parabolic sand dunes occur on the narrow stretch of
land east of Pilgrim Lake in the Province Lands of Truro. Prevailing
northwest winds blow obliquely to the shoreline and create belts of
these unusual dunes with the sands of former beaches_.
#############################################
Wampanoag Indians
[Illustration: (Wampanoag village. Native Americans broiling fish.
Signing a treaty of friendship.)]
The first human beings to live here did not arrive by sea. In all
likelihood they came on foot from the south, southwest, and east,
perhaps following caribou or other game up the river valleys across
the then wide coastal plain. These people, known as Paleoindians,
arrived at least 9,000 years ago. Little is known about them, but
they appear to have been a nomadic people, hunting and gathering
in small groups. The earliest period represented by a variety
of archeological sites is 3,000 to 6,000 BP (Before Present).
An archeological site uncovered recently by the ocean at Coast
Guard Beach suggests more permanent settlements. This site has
been carbon-dated to more than 2,000 BP, and contains post holes
indicative of shelter construction. These early Native Americans
created chipped stone tools, fished in kettle ponds, and likely
wintered in the Cape’s coniferous woodlands. By the early 1600s
American Indians used or inhabited all the lands now encompassed by
Cape Cod National Seashore. These Wampanoags lived in 6 villages
along the creeks and bays from Chatham to Wellfleet, relying on both
the land and sea for food. When French explorer Samuel de Champlain
visited Cape Cod in 1605 and 1606, he noted that villagers in
what became Eastham and Chatham were raising corn, beans, squash,
and tobacco. They tilled their fields with wooden spades after
burning off the vegetation. They used crabs as fertilizer but ate
clams, quahogs, oysters, and other shellfish. Champlain noted that
the Monomoy band at Stage Harbor in Chatham stored corn in grass
sacks buried 5 to 6 feet in the sand. He thought they were better
fishermen and farmers than hunters. The Wampanoags lived in domed
shelters (below), which consisted of a frame of saplings bent into
semicircles. These semicircles were linked by circles of saplings
running parallel to the ground. The Indians covered the frames with
grass, reeds, and bark and left a large hole in the roofs so smoke
could escape from fires in a stone-lined pit in the center. The
dwellings were not clustered but separated by cultivated fields.
_Native Americans broil fish in this Theodore de
Bry 1590 engraving (below) of a John White watercolor. Samuel de
Champlain’s 1606 map (below right) of Chatham’s Stage Harbor area,
which he called Port Fortune, shows Wampanoags attacking the French
upon learning that they intended to settle there. The French had
stayed in the harbor for 2 weeks drying out their ship and repairing
its rudder._
_Henry Botkin’s early 20th-century painting depicts
the Wampanoags and Pilgrims signing a treaty of friendship._
#############################################
Pilgrims First Landing
[Illustration: (Map showing path of the Mayflower and its shallop.
The Mayflower. The Pilgrims come ashore.)]
The _Mayflower_ Pilgrims settled in Plymouth—but only after rejecting
Cape Cod as unsuitable. On November 9, 1620, these emigrants from
England sighted the Cape, the first land they had seen in the 2
months since they left Holland. Though they had intended to continue
south and settle in the Hudson River area, they decided, because
of treacherous waters off the Cape, to stay. They sailed around
the northern end of the Cape, set anchor off what became known as
Provincetown, and drew up the “Mayflower Compact,” an agreement by
which the group of 102, a bare majority of whom were Pilgrims, would
govern themselves. During the next month 3 different small groups
made “discoveries” of the area. They found a freshwater spring in the
Truro area, encountered a few Indians, and discovered several baskets
of Indian corn buried on a hill near the Pamet River. On December
6 a group of 19 men led by Myles Standish left the _Mayflower_ in
a shallop, or small boat, camped for the night in Eastham, and
crossed Cape Cod Bay to the mainland. They decided this would be a
good place to settle and returned to the ship. On December 16, the
_Mayflower_ dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor, and the story of a new
English settlement in the New World began. A few passengers and their
offspring later settled in the Cape’s Eastham area.
_The_ Mayflower, _a 90-foot square-rigger, left
England on August 15, 1620, with a smaller vessel called the_
Speedwell. _Both vessels carried English exiles from Holland and
England, but the leaky_ Speedwell _caused two aborted departures. An
overcrowded_ Mayflower _finally left the docks on September 6, making
the arduous Atlantic crossing in a sluggish 65 days_.
_The_ Mayflower _arrived at Plymouth from Provincetown
on December 16, 1620, after failing to cross December 15 because of
bad weather. The Pilgrims came ashore on December 18. A few of them
and their offspring later settled in the Cape’s Eastham area. Graves
of_ Mayflower _passengers Constance Hopkins Snow, Giles Hopkins, and
Joseph Rogers are in Eastham’s Old Cove Burying Ground_.
#############################################
The Cape Cod House
[Illustration: (The Cape Cod house. Chimney. The half house
version. Post-and-beam construction.)]
If anything distinguishes Cape Cod nationally, it’s a house style.
Essentially the Cape Cod House is a modest story-and-a-half frame
structure that hugs the ground and has a steep roof that sheds the
rain and snow and provides protection from buffeting winds. Usually
the wooden shingles on the sides are left unpainted, and thus the
sides—and the roof—take on a natural grayish to dark brown patina
depending on the effects of the sun and wind-driven sands and salt.
Sometimes the front, shingle or clapboard, may be painted, and if so
most likely white. Many of the oldest Capes were built in stages. A
half house might become a three-quarter and later on a full house,
depending on the needs or wealth of the family. A full Cape, such
as the park’s Atwood-Higgins House (right and cutaway below), is
deceiving: it has much more room than you might expect from its
external appearance. Inside the front door is a small hallway or
entryway. To the left and the right are small parlors. In the center
of the back is a large keeping room, or kitchen, that later was
divided into 2 rooms, where most of the daily household activity
took place. At both ends of the kitchen are a buttery, or pantry,
and a bedroom, or a borning room. At the center of the house is an
intricately-designed brick chimney serving fireplaces in the parlors,
kitchen, and front hall.
The chimney divides the upstairs into 2 bedrooms, probably for
children. The eastern part (right) of the Atwood-Higgins House was
built in Wellfleet about 1730 by Thomas Higgins; the western side was
built about the same time but attached later. The house remained in
the Higgins family until 1805, when Thomas Atwood became the owner.
The Higgins family later regained ownership.
_The half house version of the Cape Cod House has 2
windows to the left or right of the front door. The three-quarter
house has a third on the other side of the door, and the full Cape
has 2 on each side._
_The post-and-beam construction method used in the
Atwood-Higgins House was commonly used on Cape Cod until the early
1800s. Posts and beams were put together by mortising a hole in one
and inserting a tenon from the other._
#############################################
Whaling’s Heyday
[Illustration: (A sperm whale overturns a whaleboat. Early harpoons.
The Penniman house. Scrimshaw objects. Whaling-trip logs.)]
Wellfleet and Provincetown were Cape Cod’s premier whaling ports in
the late 1700s and early 1800s. Some whaling ships sailed out of
other Cape towns, but these 2 ports were crowded and bustling with
ships and crews and related tradesmen and merchants. Both places
eventually gave way to Nantucket and New Bedford, but many Cape
captains continued to pursue the leviathan in distant seas. Settlers
had been intrigued by whales since Native Americans taught them how
to use beached whales for food and oil not long after the _Mayflower_
anchored in Cape Cod Bay. They soon erected towers on beaches to
look out for whales, which they would pursue in small boats along
the coasts. As whale oil grew in importance as a lighting fluid and
as whale bone and baleen were used for more household and personal
products, sloops and small schooners gave way to larger schooners
and square-riggers, such as barks, and even full-rigged ships. And
the ships extended their hunting grounds first to the South Atlantic
and then to the Pacific and Arctic oceans as their quarry changed
from right whales to sperm whales and bowheads. Whaling’s peak years
were between 1825 and 1860. The decline is traced to the discovery
of petroleum in Pennsylvania in 1859, the loss of many ships in the
Civil War, and a surge in other fisheries. Edward Penniman of Eastham
went to sea at age 11 in 1842 as a cook and at age 21 as a harpooner
aboard the New Bedford whaleship _Isabella_. By 1860 he was captain
of the bark _Minerva_. When he retired in 1883, he had made 6 voyages
as a whaling captain.
_In this painting, a sperm whale overturns a whaleboat
crew that has harpooned it._
_Harpoon styles improved over the years. Early
harpoons were double-flued (left). Later refinements included the
toggle head, invented in 1848, which was less likely to come loose
from the whale._
_While whaling crews were on long sea voyages, many of
the men whiled away the time making scrimshaw objects, including such
intricate pieces as this sewing box._
_When Augusta Penniman accompanied her husband on
voyages, she kept detailed whaling-trip logs in which she used
symbols to indicate kills and misses. In 1868 the Pennimans built
a French Second Empire mansard-roofed house (above) with a cupola
overlooking the ocean and bay in Eastham. The Penniman House, now a
part of the National Seashore, sports a pair of whale jaws at the
entrance to its walk._
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Cape Codders and the Sea
[Illustration: (Waterfront pass. Sailing card. Brewster sea captains.
A Yankee clipper. Captain Asa Eldridge. An octant.)]
Coastal packet boats, the first commercial vessels on Cape Cod,
flourished in the first half of the 19th century carrying mail,
passengers, salt, and other cargo to Boston and New York. These
boats were built in local yards from local lumber and captained by
local men. The rivalry and pride among the various Cape towns for
the fastest and most seaworthy packets stood the Cape men in good
stead when the new Republic began to engage in international trade.
Cape Codders, in fact, were among the first to sail the American flag
into many foreign ports and uncharted seas. Captain John Kendrick
of Harwich sailed from Boston in 1787 in the _Columbia_, the first
American ship to circumnavigate the globe. A Brewster captain,
Elijah Cobb, was captured by a French frigate during the French
Revolution and made a successful appeal to Robespierre for release.
After the War of 1812, many Cape Codders captained the first of the
transatlantic Liverpool packets. But their true glory awaited them on
the decks of the clipper ships, those majestic sailing vessels of the
1840s and ’50s. With their sleek hulls and tapered sterns, towering
masts and double courses of sails, their speed and maneuverability in
sailing into the wind, the “Yankee clippers” were generally regarded
as the finest wooden ships ever made. They counted scores of Cape
Codders among their captains, many of whom set transoceanic sailing
records that still stand today. To cite only one, and not the most
modest example, the following gravestone for Freeman Hatch, 1820-89,
can be found in an Eastham cemetery: “He became famous making the
astonishing passage in the clipper ship _Northern Light_ from San
Francisco in 76 days 6 hours—an achievement won by no mortal before
or since.”
_This waterfront pass was issued to lighthouse keeper
C. E. Turner of Wellfleet._
_This sailing card is for a clipper ship named after
its owner, Osborn Howes, a Dennis native who with his brother-in-law
ran an international shipping fleet out of Boston in the 1800s. He
managed or owned 43 vessels in his 87 years._
_Decked out in top hats about 1855, Brewster sea
captains Charles Crosby (left) and James Edwin Crosby flank an
unidentified English captain._
_Asa Eldridge (right) of Yarmouth served as captain of
the clipper ship_ Red Jacket _(above) when it set a record crossing
from New York to Liverpool of 13 days, 1 hour. Eldridge was lost in
the North Atlantic in February 1856 with the steamer_ Pacific.
_Sailors in the 19th century used octants to determine
their latitude by measuring the sun’s angle above the horizon at
noon. Tables converted that figure for the day, month, and year into
distance north or south of the equator._
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Fisheries
[Illustration: (Fish drying on a wharf in Provincetown. Fisherman
with quahog rake. Small boat raising a trap. Loading quahogs into a
wagon in shallow water. Collecting quahogs with a net.)]
As the name implies, Cape Cod and fishing are nearly synonymous.
The Wampanoag Indians were primarily farmers, but they also dug
clams, gathered oysters and scallops, caught crabs, and fished for
herring and other fishes, mostly in freshwater or where it mixed
with saltwater. They used bone hooks, spears, nets made of plant
fibers, and wooden-staked weirs. The first European settlers on the
Cape also were farmers, but they soon learned how bountiful the sea
was and quickly refined and developed various kinds of fisheries.
“I confess I was surprised to find that so many men spent their
whole day, ay, their whole lives almost, a-fishing,” Henry David
Thoreau observed in the mid-1800s. How they fished, where they
fished, and what they fished for have changed greatly over the years
as some species were over-fished and as technological changes were
introduced. The Atlantic cod was the first fish to spark a major
industry. In 1878, 63 vessels sailed out of Provincetown in search
of cod and returned with more than 7.5 million pounds. Wellfleet led
the Cape in fishing for mackerel; in 1879, 30 schooners followed
the schools north May to November from North Carolina to Maine. The
ships returned to Cape ports from long voyages with their catches
salted and dried for market. After brief trips, the fish were
dried on the docks in Provincetown and other ports (below left and
continuing counterclockwise). Hard-shelled clams—called quahogs and
pronounced as ko-hogs by Cape Codders—were and are harvested in deep
water with wooden-handled rakes up to 56 feet in length. Sometimes
nets were stretched between poles to form weirs; high tides would
bring the fish in; and at low tide men would go out—sometimes with
wagons and horses—to remove their catches. Early on fishermen used
small boats or dories to fish with lines, then with nets and wooden
traps, in nearby waters; trawling schooners carried dories to the
fishing grounds of the banks for cod, haddock, and groundfish. At
first lobsters were so plentiful they were used as bait and then as
food for servants; today they are not plentiful and are among the
highest-priced seafood in America. Fishermen in small boats still go
out to pull up lobster traps.
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Saltworks
[Illustration: (Moveable covers for the salt troughs. A salt works
with numerous windmills.)]
The growth in Cape Cod’s fishing industry early in the 19th century
spawned other sea-related industries. One of the most important was
the development of the saltworks. Salt was needed especially to
preserve the cod and mackerel and other fish caught at such distant
places as the Grand Banks. In colonial times, salt was obtained by
boiling seawater in enormous iron pots that were set up near the
beach, a technique that hastened the demise of the Cape’s forests.
But as early as 1776, Captain John Sears of Dennis had experimented
with making salt through evaporation of seawater in long shallow
troughs. With a bushel of salt worth a dollar at the turn of the
century, saltmaking became profitable and Cape Codders continued
to improve their methods. They incorporated movable roofs on rails
(right) to cover the troughs on cloudy or rainy days, windmills to
pump seawater through hollow wooden pipes into the troughs, and an
intricate system of reservoirs, falls, vats, and boiling rooms. The
water went through three stages: evaporation, precipitation of lime,
and crystallization of salt. Epsom salts came from boiling “bitter
water,” the liquid remaining after the salt was crystallized. During
the 1830s saltworks were a major industry in almost every Cape
town, covering dozens of acres of beaches (background engraving).
At their peak on Cape Cod, there were 442 saltworks producing more
than 500,000 bushels of salt a year. By 1840, however, the opening
up of large salt mines in the West, among other factors, signaled
the beginning of the industry’s swift decline. Still, in the 1850s,
Henry David Thoreau saw “saltworks scattered all along the shore,
with their long rows of vats resting on piles driven into the marsh,
their low, turtle-like roofs, and their ... windmills ... novel and
interesting objects to an inlander.”
#############################################
A Coastline Littered With Shipwrecks
[Illustration: (Locations of Cape shipwrecks. The schooner
“Messenger” grounded in Wellfleet. The fishing boat “Ulysses” in
rough seas.)]
About 3,000 ships and small fishing boats have wrecked in heavy
fog or storms along the Cape’s coastline. Periodic northeasters
and occasional hurricanes pound the coast and drive ships upon
sandbars—more than 1,000 of them between 1843 and 1903 alone. One
of the first recorded wrecks occurred December 17, 1626, when the
Virginia-bound _Sparrowhawk_ ran aground off Orleans. A gale then
forced the ship over the sandbar and grounded it in the harbor. The
ship was repaired, but another storm caused so much damage it was
abandoned. In 1863 a storm removed sand from the wreck, and the
remains were taken later to the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth. The
_Sparrowhawk’s_ passengers survived their ordeal, but many have not
been so fortunate. More than 145 lives were lost when the pirate
ship _Whydah_ sank off Wellfleet in 1717. The most lost in any wreck
were all 175 passengers and crew who went down off Truro with the
steamship _Portland_ in a huge gale November 27, 1898. Such storms
have turned many fishermen’s wives into widows. Of the women living
in Barnstable County in 1839, nearly 1,000 had lost husbands at sea.
In one of the worst disasters, only 2 of Truro’s 9 fishing fleet
crews survived a gale on October 3, 1841; 57 fishermen were drowned,
and 9 of them were 11 to 14 years old. The storm left 19 Truro widows
with 39 children. Dennis lost 20 men and Yarmouth lost 10. Some
military ships and large liners also have gone down in Cape waters.
On December 17, 1927, the Coast Guard cutter _Paulding_ collided with
a Navy submarine as it surfaced off Wood End at Provincetown’s tip.
Divers found that 6 of the 40 submariners initially survived, but
they perished as a gale hampered rescue efforts. In 1956 the Italian
passenger liner _Andrea Doria_ sank 50 miles south of Nantucket after
colliding in fog with the Swedish ship _Stockholm_; 52 were killed;
1,662 were rescued. Overall, losses have been reduced since 1914,
when the Cape Cod Canal linked Cape Cod Bay with Buzzards Bay and
allowed ships to avoid treacherous shoals. Today 30,000 ships and
boats use the canal annually.
_This map shows the locations of Cape shipwrecks
between 1802 and 1967. The schooner_ Messenger _(top) of Boston
lost its masts in a storm off Long Island in 1894; weeks later the
hull washed ashore in Wellfleet. Sailing out of Salem, the_ Ulysses
_(right) was grounded with 2 other ships off the Cape on February 22,
1803. After struggling ashore, 87 men froze to death_.
#############################################
Lighthouses and Lifesaving
[Illustration: (Crew at the Chatham station. Hauling the boat by
horse to the water. Logo of U.S. Life Saving Service. View of a
station.)]
A major step in aiding shipwreck victims was taken in 1872 when
Congress established the U.S. Life Saving Service, a predecessor to
today’s Coast Guard. Nine stations were initially built at Monomoy,
Chatham, Orleans, Nauset, Cahoon Hollow, Pamet River, Peaked Hill
Bars, Highland, and Race Point. Eventually others joined them at
Monomoy Point, Old Harbor, High Head, and Wood End. All were manned
almost entirely by local men. From 1872 to 1915, station crews
patrolled the beaches day and night in rain, fog, and blizzard,
meeting at halfway stations to exchange tokens and return to their
stations. If a wreck or a ship in trouble was sighted, a red Coston
flare was ignited to alert the ship that it had been seen. Then the
station crew brought the 18-foot surfboat op a cart drawn by horse or
by hand to the site. If the surf proved too rough to launch the boat,
the crew attempted to shoot a life line from a small cannon to the
stricken vessel, from which a “breeches buoy” could be suspended and
the victims taken off one by one. In these pictures, a Life Saving
Service crew poses at one of the Chatham stations and in a drill
another crew gets ready to haul its surfboat by horse to the water.
In the 43 years of its existence, the Cape’s Life Saving Service
performed hundreds of sea rescues, some of truly heroic proportions.
Despite their motto—“You have to go, but you don’t have to come
back”—there was very little loss of life among the crews, a tribute
to their skill and training. After the Cape Cod Canal was built in
1914, the number of shipwrecks declined greatly. In 1915 the Life
Saving stations were made a part of the newly-created U.S. Coast
Guard. Today the Coast Guard staffs stations only at Provincetown,
Chatham, Sandwich, and Woods Hole; the old Nauset station (shown in
color) is now a part of the National Seashore. The recent advent
of ship radar, radio beacons, LORAN, and other sophisticated
navigational equipment has even further reduced the risks of offshore
travel. Despite all these improvements, the sandbars and storms of
the Outer Cape have not claimed their last victims.
#############################################
Two Henrys: Thoreau and Beston
[Illustration: _Henry David Thoreau_ _Henry Beston_]
Cape Cod has attracted a number of authors who have written countless
stories and books about the place. Two books that have become
classics were written by Henry David Thoreau and by Henry Beston.
Thoreau’s _Cape Cod_ was published posthumously in 1865 and tells of
visits totaling 3 weeks that he made to the Cape in 1849, 1850, and
1855. He walked to Provincetown from Eastham absorbing its geologic
and natural history and observing the solitary life of its people,
especially the lighthouse keepers and shipwreck scavengers, known as
“wreckers.” Thoreau may have been the first in print to liken the
Cape to a “bared and bended arm of Massachusetts.” He was especially
fascinated with the beach from Nauset Harbor to Race Point and with
the bluff abruptly rising to its west. “This sandbank—the backbone
of the Cape—rose directly from the beach to the height of a hundred
feet or more above the ocean. It was with singular emotions that we
first stood upon it and discovered what a place we had chosen to walk
on ... a perfect desert of shining sand....” In his day more of the
Cape was barren than today, but efforts to plant grasses were already
underway. Henry Beston spent more time on the Cape than Thoreau,
and he stayed mostly in one place. His book, _The Outermost House_,
tells of a year, in 1927-28, he spent among the elements at a 2-room,
10-windowed cottage in the dunes on Nauset Beach opposite Fort Hill
in Eastham (background photo). As Thoreau had done at Walden Pond,
Beston chronicled nature’s seasonal sights, sounds, and smells on
this narrow spit of sand, a place of “outermost” exposure. “Listen
to the surf, really lend it your ears,” Beston wrote, “and you will
hear in it a world of sounds: hollow boomings and heavy roarings,
great watery tumblings and tramplings, long hissing seethes, sharp
rifle-shot reports, splashes, whispers, the grinding undertone of
stones, and sometimes vocal sounds that might be the half-heard talk
of people in the sea.” Beston’s cottage became a National Literary
Landmark in 1964, but in 1978 it was washed away in a storm. No doubt
he would have assented to what the elements had done.
#############################################
The Cranberry Bog
[Illustration: (The cranberry plant. Cranberry pickers. Mechanical
picker.)]
Cranberries are among the true natives of Cape Cod. The plant,
_Vaccinium macrocarpon_, is a low evergreen shrub of the heath family
that grows in bogs. Legend has it that the plant originally was
named craneberry because its small, bell-shaped, pink flowers look
like the neck and head of a crane, or heron, that stalks marshes and
bogs. The deep red, nearly round, acidic berry is almost a half-inch
in diameter. Indians called cranberries sassamanesh. They used this
fruit as food and medicine; they mixed ripe berries with dried
venison to make pemmican and placed roasted unripe berries on wounds.
They also taught Pilgrims to use wild cranberries in their foods, and
the colonists shipped 10 barrels of them to Charles II, but he found
them too tart. Cranberries remained popular on the Cape, however,
and by 1773 anyone caught picking more than a quart in Provincetown
before September 20 would be fined a dollar—and would have to
surrender the berries. Sailing ships served cranberries to their
crews to prevent or cure scurvy. In 1813 Henry Hall of North Dennis
made a discovery that led to commercial production: the berries
became invigorated when sand drifted on the plants.
Soon other Cape Codders were purposely sanding their bogs, and
production was rising. By 1855 Cape Cod was a major Massachusetts
producer with 2,408 acres in cranberries. Today about 1,250 acres
are in production, 10 percent of the state’s total. Besides needing
bogs with good peat bottoms, growers must have a water supply for
sprinklers or enough water to flood their bogs through a series of
ditches. Between November and March, and occasionally at other times,
bogs are flooded to prevent frost from killing the vines. Ice up to
8 inches thick is allowed to form and the water below it is drained
off. To sand the bogs, the ice is covered every 3 to 5 years with up
to an inch of sand, which sinks to the bottom when the ice melts. In
April the meltwater is drained off. Harvesting starts in September
and continues through October. In this old postcard (below), pickers
armed with wooden-toothed scoops move across a bog harvesting the
berries. Today the process has been mechanized. More than 100
cranberry varieties have been developed, but the Early Black and
Howes are direct descendants of the wild ones growing on the Cape.
Processors now produce sauces, juices, and relishes that have become
as closely associated with Thanksgiving as the Pilgrims and turkeys.
#############################################
Marconi’s Wireless Station
[Illustration: (Guglielmo Marconi with his wireless telegraphy
equipment. Early radio communications equipment. Large circular
antenna using 20 wooden masts. Plate commemorating the first wireless
message.)]
In these days of instant worldwide communications via satellites,
it is difficult to imagine the excitement that came with the
advent of wireless telegraphy and radio. In the 1890s, the idea
of transmitting long-distance messages via electromagnetic waves
captured the imagination of Guglielmo Marconi, a young Italian. In
1899 Marconi succeeded in sending a radio message across the English
Channel, and, he went to work on developing a transatlantic system.
Two communications cables already had been laid on the bottom of the
ocean between France and Cape Cod. Marconi, too, selected a site
for a station on the Cape, high on a cliff overlooking the ocean in
South Wellfleet. He built others at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, and at
Poldhu in Great Britain. At first the antennas at South Wellfleet and
Poldhu consisted of huge rings of masts, but these were destroyed by
gales before any messages could be transmitted. They were replaced
at each place by 4 towers 210 feet high. In December 1901, at an
experimental site in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Marconi received the
first transatlantic signal, 3 dots for the letter “S,” from Britain.
In December 1902 his Glace Bay station received a complete message
from Poldhu. On the night of January 18, 1903, he transmitted from
South Wellfleet this message, in Morse code, from President Theodore
Roosevelt to King Edward VII: “In taking advantage of the wonderful
triumph of scientific research and ingenuity which has been achieved
in perfecting a system of wireless telegraphy, I extend on behalf of
the American people most cordial greetings and good wishes to you
and to all the people of the British Empire.” The king replied in
a similar vein, making this the first 2-way wireless communication
between Europe and America. Soon newspapers and others were
transmitting messages across the Atlantic, and the wireless became
the common way of communicating with ships. For 15 years telegraphers
sent out messages on the South Wellfleet spark-gap transmitter. But
in 1917 the Navy closed the station. It was dismantled in 1920 and
scrapped. Its successor, WCC in Chatham, operated until 1993.
_Guglielmo Marconi displays his wireless telegraphy
equipment in England in 1896. The Leyden jar capacitor and boxlike
transformer (below) represent an application of Marconi’s invention
in World War I for national defense, maritime safety, and commercial
communications._
_At South Wellfleet Marconi first built a circular
antenna consisting of 20 ship masts 200 feet high about 165 feet back
from the edge of the ridge overlooking the Atlantic. The masts were
blown down in a storm November 25, 1901._
_This ironstone plate commemorates the first wireless
message, received from President Theodore Roosevelt by King Edward
VII on January 19, 1903, and shows the 4 towers that replaced the 20
masts._
#############################################
Part 3
Guide and Adviser
[Illustration: (Colorful yacht sails.)]
#############################################
Visiting Cape Cod
[Illustration: (Postcard with “Greetings from Cape Cod”. Woman
sitting on a sunny beach. Portrait of a bus driver. Artist painting
a Cape Cod scene. Red maple leaf. Map of major highways into and on
the Cape.))]
Though Cape Cod has been known as Massachusetts’ major summer resort
for many years, it is now attracting a number of travelers at all
times of the year. Today more than 5 million people visit the Cape
annually.
Those wishing to avoid crowds may prefer to walk its windswept
beaches and tour its historic sites between September and June, the
off-season.
That’s tip Number 1 in this handbook’s Guide and Adviser section,
which focuses on that part of Cape Cod containing the National
Seashore. This is the area, known as the Lower or Outer Cape,
between Chatham and Provincetown. Some information also is provided
to help you travel throughout the rest of Cape Cod and neighboring
offshore islands. The first few pages deal with general travel tips
and activities information. Then, 2-page spreads take closer looks
at towns within or near the 27,000-acre National Seashore. They are
followed by travel tips about nearby Cape Cod attractions and the
islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
Seasons
The summer beach season in July and August attracts the most
vacationers, especially families with children. But enough tourist
facilities are open in the fall, winter, and spring to take care of
lodging and food needs.
In July and August daytime temperatures usually rise into the 80s°F.
From September through November, temperatures gradually decline from
the 70s to the 50s, or lower. Fall’s cool, brisk days make the Cape a
favorite destination for some New Englanders on the Columbus Day and
Thanksgiving holidays.
Winters are generally cold and windy, with temperatures averaging in
the 30s during the day and in the 20s at night. The Atlantic Ocean
and Cape Cod Bay help to moderate the winter temperatures, so the
Cape’s snowfall is considerably less than the mainland’s.
As in all parts of New England, spring is short, arriving at the
earliest in April and often not until June. Like the fall, however,
spring can be one of the most pleasant times on Cape Cod because of
the relative solitude.
Transportation
Major highways leading to Cape Cod are I-495 and Mass. 3 from the
Boston area and I-195 from Providence, R.I., and Fall River, Mass.
On the Cape itself U.S. 6 is the primary road to and through the
National Seashore. Those wishing to travel through the Mid-Cape, or
Upper Cape, towns and villages may use Mass. 6A on the north side or
Mass. 28 on the south. In the summer, traffic moves slowly on most
roads and highways.
=Buses= Major bus lines serve Hyannis on the Cape from Boston,
Providence, Fall River, and New Bedford. Additional routes run from
Hyannis to Chatham and Provincetown.
=Air Service= Flights operate from Boston, Providence, and New
York City to Hyannis and between Boston and Provincetown. Private
and charter planes may use airstrips in Hyannis, Chatham, and
Provincetown.
=Ferries= A passengers-only ferry runs in summer between Boston and
Provincetown. Passenger and vehicle ferries operate from Woods Hole
and Hyannis to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket in the summer. Ferry
services to the islands are limited in other seasons. For further
information: Woods Hole, Martha’s Vineyard & Nantucket Steamship
Authority, P.O. Box 284, Dept. CG, Woods Hole, MA 02543-0284,
telephone 508-540-2022; or Hy-line Cruises, Ocean Street Dock, Pier
#1, Hyannis, MA 02601-4715, telephone 508-778-2600.
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Cape Cod National Seashore
[Illustration: (Map of the National Park.)
Local Geographical Terms
=Outer Cape= generally refers to the area from Chatham through
Provincetown.
=Lower Cape= includes the same area as Outer Cape but could encompass
Brewster, Harwich, and perhaps Dennis.
=Upper Cape=, not shown on this map, refers to Bourne, Falmouth,
Sandwich, and Mashpee.]
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The National Seashore
[Illustration: (Bird tracks in the sand. Beach scene. Drawing of a
Horseshoe crab. Scenic view in the woods. Two people looking for
shells.)]
=The National Park Service operates two major visitor centers in Cape
Cod National Seashore.=
The =Salt Pond Visitor Center= on U.S. 6 in Eastham has an
information desk, exhibits on the natural and human history of the
Cape, audiovisual shows, a bookstore, and special programs. A foot
trail from the center goes by Nauset Marsh; the bike path leads to
the beach. The Buttonbush Trail, with special features for the blind,
is located next to the visitor center parking lot. Ask about other
facilities and services accessible to those with disabilities.
The =Province Lands Visitor Center= in Provincetown is smaller than
the one at Salt Pond, but it offers similar services. Exhibits and
guided walks focus on the life of the dunes.
Both visitor centers are open daily from spring until late fall, and
the staffs at both centers offer guided walks, talks, and evening
programs on the Cape’s natural and human history. The many subjects
include life of the marshes, seashore ecology, geology, archeology,
birdlife, Indians, early settlers, and architecture. These services
are provided daily in the summer and on a reduced basis in the spring
and from Labor Day through Columbus Day. Ask for schedules at the
visitor centers.
The =Race Point Ranger Station= in Provincetown provides year-round
informational services. Informational services also are available in
the winter at the Salt Pond Visitor Center and at park headquarters
in South Wellfleet.
Environmental Education
The National Seashore is host to 2 environmental education centers
that accommodate educational groups on an advanced booking basis
during the school year. For further information, write to the
National Seashore.
Camping
There are no campgrounds operated by the National Park Service, but
a number of private commercial campgrounds are located within the
boundaries of the National Seashore. Otherwise camping on park lands
is prohibited. The Roland C. Nickerson State Park, on Mass. 6A in
nearby Brewster, offers camping on a first-come, first-served basis
from mid-April to mid-October; there are no trailer hookups. The park
address is Main Street, Brewster, MA 02631-0003, and the telephone
number is 508-896-3491. For information about private campgrounds,
write or telephone the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce (see below).
_The National Seashore is a place of discovery, a place to find bird
tracks, horseshoe crabs, shells, polished stones, and life along
trails._
Travel Services
Restaurants, hotels, motels, gifts shops, stores, gasoline stations,
and other facilities are located in nearby towns and villages.
Lodging reservations are essential in July and August. For
information and to make reservations, write: Cape Cod Chamber of
Commerce, Routes 6 and 132, Hyannis, MA 02601-0016; or telephone:
508-362-3225.
Further Information
For specific inquiries about the Seashore prior to or after a visit,
write: Superintendent, Cape Cod National Seashore, 99 Marconi Site
Road, Wellfleet, MA 02667; or telephone 508-349-3785. Call the Salt
Pond Visitor Center at 508-255-3421, or the Province Lands Visitor
Center (closed in winter) at 508-487-1256.
#############################################
Water Activities
[Illustration: _Coast Guard Beach_ _Surf casting at Race Point,
Provincetown_ _Mussels Quohogs Softshell clam_]
=The Cape’s recreational activities are mostly water-related,
naturally. Its many beaches, harbors, and inlets offer endless
opportunities whether you want to swim, surf, sail, fish, water-ski,
use a motorboat, or just sunbathe.=
Swimming
Within the National Seashore, lifeguard services, restrooms, changing
areas, and related facilities are located at these beaches operated
by the National Park Service from Eastham to Provincetown: Coast
Guard, Nauset Light, Marconi, Head of the Meadow, Race Point, and
Herring Cove (see map on pages 88-89). Several towns also have public
beaches; all of them charge parking fees in the summer.
The water usually is quite cold—temperatures may be in the high
50s°F even in the summer—and the surf can be rough at times, so be
especially careful. Some parents with young children prefer beaches
on Cape Cod Bay to those on the Atlantic coast because the water
is warmer and usually calmer and because the beaches slope more
gradually into the water. See rip current warning, page 108.
Motorboating
The many inlets and harbors along the coastlines make the Cape
appealing to motorboaters. Most town harbors have boat launching
ramps, boat rentals, and other facilities. Marine supply stores are
located in most Cape towns.
Some harbors, such as Provincetown, Wellfleet, Orleans, Chatham,
Harwich Port, and Woods Hole, have docks, moorings, and other marine
facilities for those visiting the Cape by powerboat. Write to the
Chamber of Commerce or inquire locally for specific information.
Sailing, Surfing, and Windsurfing
Sailboats and sailboards are a familiar sight in Cape Cod waters from
Buzzards Bay and Nantucket Sound to the Atlantic itself and Cape Cod
Bay. In the National Seashore area, bays and harbors in Chatham,
Orleans, Wellfleet, and Provincetown are excellent for those using
small sailboats and sailboards. The Atlantic coast from Orleans to
Provincetown is usually good for surfboarding. Special areas are
designated for their use at beaches run by the National Park Service.
If in doubt, inquire locally.
Fishing
Saltwater fishing is one of the most popular recreational activities
on the Cape. Surf-fishermen line up on the more accessible beaches to
cast their lines into the Atlantic for striped bass, bluefish, and
flounder, while others seek secluded spots to try their luck.
Charter fishing boats work out of Chatham, Orleans, Wellfleet, and
Provincetown. Besides the fish cited above, you might catch halibut,
haddock, and mackerel.
No license is required for saltwater sport fishing, but there are
size and number limits and a state license is necessary for fishing
in the many freshwater ponds. Commercial fishing is not permitted
within the National Seashore. Inquire at town offices or fishing
supply stores about regulations and for other information.
Shellfishing
Because so many clams and other shellfish have been harvested for
so many years, the supplies are dwindling and towns regulate their
gathering and areas and times when shellfishing is allowed. You must
obtain a town shellfish permit.
While on the Cape, you will hear about “mussels,” “steamers,”
“quahogs,” and “little necks.” What are the differences?
=Mussels=, which are dark blue oblongs about 2½ inches long, are
found in groups attached to rocks or pilings.
=Quahogs= are grayish hardshell clams that are commonly used in
chowders. Small quahogs, known as little necks or cherrystones, are
served raw. Quahogs are dug with a wide-toothed rake, or scratcher,
primarily along the Cape Cod Bay shoreline at low tide and in the
shallows of Nauset Bay and Pleasant Bay. From their boats, commercial
shellfishermen use a heavy, long-handled rake that looks like a wire
basket on the end of two long poles.
=Softshells= are whitish, oblong clams that are steamed or fried.
They are dug with a small fine-toothed rake, or clam hoe, at low tide
on sand flats facing the Atlantic, Nantucket Sound, and Cape Cod Bay.
You can spot their locations by tiny holes in the sand. Sometimes
they squirt water at you as you step near their holes.
Other common shellfish are bay or sea =scallops=. Scallop shells
come in a variety of colors and have ribs or elevated ridges running
from the top to the outer edges. Bay scallops usually are found in
eelgrass beds.
A tip to out-of-staters: Cape Cod clam chowder is made with a milk
base. Manhattan clam chowder is made with a tomato base. Do not
expect the latter on the Cape. Don’t even ask for it!
#############################################
Whale Watching
[Illustration: (Minke whale. Right whale. Humpback whale. Finback
whale.)]
Humans trace their ancestry to animals that left the sea and moved
onto land. Whales trace their ancestry to a group of mammals that
left the land 60 million years ago and returned to the sea. In
relatively more recent times, Cape Cod, Nantucket, and New Bedford
were East Coast centers for the harvesting of whales. Today, the Cape
is a major center for the watching of whales. Commercial sightseeing
boats conduct whale-watching tours of 3 to 8 hours from piers in
Provincetown, Barnstable, and Plymouth from April to November. In
the spring whales can be seen off the Cape migrating from the south,
and in the fall they can be seen migrating from the north. Whales
commonly seen off the Cape include the humpback, minke, and finback.
Right whales are sometimes seen in the fall and spring. Whales
may often be seen from land at Province Lands Visitor Center and
from Race Point Beach. But you will see the whales up closer from a
boat—and they will get a chance to watch you.
Minke whale
_Spouts rarely seen; sleek, like finback, but much smaller; body gray
above, light underside; white band on flippers; narrow, pointed head;
15 to 35 feet long; seen in spring and fall._
Right whale
_V-shaped double spout; white callosities on head; short, rounded
flippers; body black above and below, with white patches by chin and
navel; no dorsal fin; shows black tail flukes when diving; 35 to 56
feet long; seen most often in spring._
Humpback whale
_Mushroom-shaped spout; long, white flippers; barnacles on snout;
body black above, splotches of white on belly; very acrobatic,
jumping, spinning, slapping tail; shows white patches on flukes when
diving; 30 to 56 feet long; seen in spring and early summer._
Finback whale
_Tall, slender spout; flat, wedge-shaped head; dark gray above white
belly; left side dark gray, right side including lower jaw white
like belly; gray stripes behind eyes forming V’s on back; prominent
dorsal fin; rarely shows tail when diving; 40 to 85 feet long; seen
in spring, summer, and fall._
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Recreation Ashore
[Illustration: _Biking in the Province Lands_ _Red Maple Swamp Trail_]
=Recreational opportunities abound on land as well as on or in the
water. The National Seashore offers a number of short trails, a major
biking trail, bridle paths, and birds, birds, birds.=
Biking
The 26-mile Cape Cod Rail Trail follows an old railroad bed from
Dennis to South Wellfleet. This trail connects the National Seashore
with Nickerson State Park’s camping facilities in Brewster.
Three bike trails are located within the National Seashore. The
=Nauset Trail=, 1.6 miles long, starts at the Salt Pond Visitor
Center and runs to Coast Guard Beach.
The =Head of the Meadow Trail= is 2 miles long and runs between High
Head Road and Head of the Meadow Beach parking area in Truro. The
trail commemorates the Pilgrims’ first discovery of fresh drinking
water in 1620.
The most difficult of the 3 trails is a =5¼-mile loop= through the
dunes of the Province Lands area. A 1-mile spur from the loop leads
to Herring Cove Beach on Cape Cod Bay. A half-mile spur leads to Race
Point Beach.
Bikers may also take a roundtrip along the Cape Cod Canal.
Bicycles may be rented in Orleans, Eastham, and Provincetown.
=Safety Tips= Check your brakes, gears, and steering before starting
out, especially if you are using an unfamiliar bicycle. Wear a helmet.
All trails are two-way, so keep to the right.
Be alert for hikers and watch out for sand on the trails.
Use front and rear brakes together, or you may be thrown over the
handlebars.
Do not speed.
Hiking
Walking the self-guiding trails located throughout the National
Seashore is an excellent way to get away from the hurly-burly pace of
the tourist areas and to get a sense of the Cape’s natural and human
history. Most of the trails are not arduous.
The =Nauset Marsh Trail= in Eastham is a 1-mile loop that starts
at Salt Pond, a glacial kettle pond that is fed twice daily by the
ocean. From the trail you can get a close look at the life of Nauset
Marsh, which was a bay when Champlain explored the area in 1605.
The =Beech Forest Trail= on Race Point Road near the Province Lands
Visitor Center consists of 2 loops totaling 1 mile and tells the
story of dune ponds and the elimination of early forests of beech,
oak, pine, and cedar on the Lower Cape.
The =Atlantic White Cedar Swamp Trail= of 1.2 miles starts at
the Marconi Station Site in Wellfleet, descends inland through a
landscape in which the trees gradually grow taller as the effects of
the sea lessen. The trail ends at a white cedar swamp in a glacial
kettle, and returns to the parking area on the Old Wireless Road.
For information on other trails, see pages 100-105. While hiking on
the Cape, be on the watch for ticks (see Lyme disease precautions on
page 108).
Horseback Riding
Because of the fragility of the plants and soil, horseback riding is
restricted to three bridle paths located in the Provincetown area and
on designated dirt roads. Horses are not permitted on nature trails.
The =Sunset Trail= starts near Race Point Road and leads through
dunes to the ocean. The =West Trail= starts at the same point
but passes through shady pitch pine and black oak forests and by
freshwater ponds and cranberry bogs. The =Herring Cove Trail=
traverses a narrow barrier beach along Cape Cod Bay.
Allow 2 hours for a round trip on each of the bridle paths. Ask for
more information about these trails at the visitor centers.
#############################################
Birdwatching
[Illustration: _Black duck_ _Clapper rail_ _Belted kingfisher_]
Cape Cod is one of the best places for birdwatching on the East
Coast. Besides the terns, gulls, and ducks common to most seashores,
the Cape is a seasonal home to a great number of marsh and lowland
dwellers and a stopover for numerous migratory species traveling the
Atlantic Flyway. More than 360 species have been recorded.
Some of the best places on the Lower Cape for birdwatching include
Fort Hill, Coast Guard Beach, and Nauset Marsh in Eastham, the
heathlands near Marconi Station, the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s
Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary in South Wellfleet, the Pleasant Bay
area and the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge in Chatham, and, of
course, all the beaches in between.
With the right weather conditions, the Beech Forest in Provincetown
is good for seeing spring migrants. Also in the spring, migrating
hawks may be seen from many vantage points, and autumn falcon flights
on Cape Cod can be spectacular. Watch for seabirds from Race Point
Beach any time of the year but particularly after northeast winds.
Ask at the National Seashore visitor centers about checklists and
other birding publications.
Piping Plover, a Threatened Species
_All birds are protected within the National Seashore, but the piping
plover is getting special protection. This small, sand-colored bird
once was commonly seen along the Atlantic Coast, but its numbers
dwindled greatly because of habitat loss. In 1918 the piping plover
came under the protection of the Migratory Bird Treaty. Its numbers
rose until the 1940s, when increases in beach recreation and
development again threatened the bird. In 1986 the piping plover was
listed by the Federal Government as a threatened species._
_The National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are
jointly making efforts to protect piping plover nesting areas on the
outer beaches. As a result, the piping plover’s U.S. Atlantic coast
population now totals nearly 1,000 pairs._
_To help protect this threatened species, respect all areas fenced or
posted, stay away from the birds and their nests, keep pets leashed
on beaches where they are allowed, and do not bury any garbage on
beaches, because it attracts predators._
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Orleans, Brewster, and Chatham
[Illustration: _Chatham fishing wharf_ _Brewster house_ _Jonathan
Young Windmill_]
=On the Outer Cape in the summer, the towns of Orleans, Brewster, and
Chatham provide a full range of food, lodging, and other services and
facilities for vacationers. Some facilities remain open year round.=
=The National Seashore’s authorized boundaries encompass parts of
Orleans and Chatham, primarily on the relatively remote Nauset Beach
sandspit.=
Orleans
The town is named for Louis-Philippe de Bourbon, Duke of Orleans, who
later was the King of France; he supposedly visited this area while
exiled during the French Revolution. In the War of 1812 residents
claimed to have driven off attacking British ships.
Major industries in the late 1800s were commercial fishing,
shipbuilding, and saltmaking. Today, Orleans offers a variety of
restaurants, lodging facilities, shops, and travel-related services
with ready access to the National Seashore.
The =Nauset (Orleans) Beach= is within the National Seashore but is
town-owned and operated; fees are charged in spring and summer. A
surfing area is provided.
=Boating opportunities= abound with 20 town landings providing
access to Cape Cod Bay and to Pleasant Bay, which in turn leads to
the Atlantic and Nantucket Sound. Several boatyards offer boat and
equipment rentals.
=Other places of interest=: Orleans Historical Society, French Cable
Station Museum, Jonathan Young Windmill.
Brewster
The town of Brewster is on the sheltered Cape Cod Bay side of the
upper arm where the trees grow taller and the grass thicker than
they do between Eastham and Provincetown. Old ship captains’ houses
and giant elms line Mass. 6A, which meanders through town. Numerous
antiques shops, restaurants, and other travel facilities also line
the highway.
The =Cape Cod Museum of Natural History=, a nonprofit organization
on Mass. 6A, preserves in conjunction with a town-owned reserve an
ancient herring run between Cape Cod Bay and freshwater ponds. The
museum, open year round, offers ecology exhibits, nature trails,
films, lectures, and, in the spring, opportunities to watch alewives
run on Stony Brook. For further information, write: P.O. Box 1710,
Brewster, MA 02631-0016; telephone 508-896-3867.
At =Stony Brook Mill=, on Stony Brook Road off Mass. 6A, you can see
corn ground at a water-powered gristmill and tour a miller’s museum.
The =Brewster Historical Society Museum=, on Mass. 6A in East
Brewster, exhibits local history.
=Roland C. Nickerson State Park=, on the eastern edge of Brewster,
is an excellent place to camp if you plan to spend much time in
the National Seashore. The park has 1,955 acres with more than 400
campsites available on a first-come, first-served basis. Recreational
activities include freshwater swimming, boating, bicycling, and
hiking. For bicyclists the Cape Cod Rail Trail links the state park
with the National Seashore 8 miles away. For further information,
write: Roland C. Nickerson State Park, Main Street, Brewster, MA
02631-0003; telephone 518-896-3491.
For more information about the town, call the Brewster Board of
Trade: 508-896-5713.
Chatham
Chatham sits at the Cape’s elbow, facing both the Atlantic and
Nantucket Sound. As a result, the morning fog seems to stay a little
longer in Chatham than elsewhere on the Cape.
Commercial fishing boats still work out of Chatham harbors, but the
main activity in the summer is tending to vacationers’ needs. Main
Street, Mass. 28, is a beehive of shops, motels, and restaurants. The
Fourth of July parade and Friday evening summer band concerts are
longtime Chatham traditions.
An overlook near the =Coast Guard lighthouse= on Main Street provides
excellent views of the Atlantic and of the massive swath cut through
the Nauset (North) Beach spit in a storm in 1987.
Just south of the lighthouse, on Morris Island, is the =Monomoy
National Wildlife Refuge=, a difficult place to access but a great
place for birdwatching. Guided natural history tours on the island
are available through the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History and the
Wellfleet Bay Audubon Sanctuary.
Chatham has a few small public beaches and a large one, Harding Beach
on Nantucket Sound. Remember, the waters of Nantucket Sound are
usually calmer and about 5 degrees warmer than those of the Atlantic.
Diligent history buffs can locate a marker at Stage Harbor
commemorating Samuel de Champlain’s visit in 1606.
=Other places of interest=: Old Atwood House, built in 1752, on Stage
Harbor Road; Chatham Railroad Museum; Old Gristmill; fishing boats
unloading at Chatham Fish Pier.
#############################################
Eastham and Wellfleet
[Illustration: _Penniman House_ _Old Schoolhouse Museum_ _Wellfleet
church door_ _Trail to Great Island_]
=The character of the Cape’s landscape changes the farther out you
go from the mainland. At Eastham and Wellfleet the land becomes
noticeably flatter, the vegetation sparser, and the sand more
evident. You’ve reached the Outer Cape—and the National Seashore.=
=Eastham is home to the National Seashore’s Salt Pond Visitor Center,
and Wellfleet is home to its headquarters. A stop at the visitor
center east of U.S. 6 is an excellent way to discover—through films,
exhibits, publications, interpretive programs, and guided walks—the
Outer Cape’s many natural and historical features and recreational
opportunities (see pages 90-91).=
Eastham
When the Pilgrims landed on Cape Cod, a small group led by Myles
Standish encountered some Indians on Eastham’s bay side. After the
Pilgrims had settled in at Plymouth, some of them decided to move
back to the Cape, and in 1644 a group founded Nauset, which has been
known as Eastham since 1651. One of the Nauset founders, Thomas
Prence, governed the whole of Plymouth Colony from Eastham for a few
years.
Symbolic of these Plymouth-Eastham ties is the gristmill at
=Windmill Park= on the west side of U.S. 6, about 2½ miles past the
Orleans border. The mill was built in the 1600s in Plymouth and was
reconstructed in Eastham in 1793. The mill is open during the summer
and on weekends in the spring and fall (see page 47).
The =Penniman House= on Fort Hill Road is symbolic of another Eastham
era: the heyday of sailing ships and whaling. Edward Penniman was 11
years old in 1842 when he left Fort Hill and went to sea. By the time
he was 29 he was captain of his own whaler and soon was sailing to
ports around the world. He returned to Eastham in 1868 to build this
ornate house complete with mansard roof, kerosene chandelier, and
cupola (see page 49).
The =Nauset Marsh Trail= is a loop that starts and ends at the
National Seashore’s Salt Pond Visitor Center and goes past its
namesake, a former glacial kettle pond that has been inundated by
seawater, a salt marsh rich in wildlife, and an abandoned farmstead.
=Fort Hill Trail= takes a loop through the late-18th century
farmstead of Rev. Samuel Treat. You can start at either of 2 parking
lots on Fort Hill Road south of the visitor center. It winds past
stone walls to Skiff Hill and Fort Hill on the edge of Nauset Marsh
and then past the Penniman House. The =Red Maple Swamp Trail= is a
spur loop off the Fort Hill Trail.
=Other places of interest=: whaling, lifesaving items, and other
artifacts at the Historical Society’s Old Schoolhouse Museum opposite
Salt Pond Visitor Center; Doane Rock, a glacial erratic; Coast Guard
Beach and Nauset Light Beach; Three Sisters Lighthouses; local
historical objects at Swift-Daley House on U.S. 6.
Wellfleet
The town of Wellfleet—which was a part of Eastham and called
Billingsgate until 1763—is an old whaling port and still a major
fishing and shellfish center on Cape Cod Bay. Some say Wellfleet got
its name from being a “whale fleet” base, while others say the name
came from the Wallfleet oyster beds area of England.
The center of Wellfleet is small but has several restaurants, shops,
art galleries, and other facilities for vacationers. The town boasts
of its First Congregational Church clock that strikes ship’s time.
The Massachusetts Audubon Society runs the 700-acre =Wellfleet
Bay Wildlife Sanctuary= west of U.S. 6 in South Wellfleet. Trails
go through beach, marsh, and pine forest. It’s a good place for
birdwatching.
Past the sanctuary, to the east of U.S. 6, is the =National Seashore
headquarters=. Informational services are provided here when the
Province Lands Visitor Center is closed in the winter.
The =Marconi Station Site=, located past the headquarters on a bluff
facing the Atlantic, is where Guglielmo Marconi transmitted the first
transatlantic radio message, between Theodore Roosevelt and the King
of England, in January 1903 (see pages 78-79).
While you’re at the Marconi Station Site, take the 1.2-mile =Atlantic
White Cedar Swamp Trail= (see page 97).
On Wellfleet’s west side, another trail leads out to and across
=Great Island=, a glacial remnant that has become a peninsula. This
former island was once dotted with lookout towers for whales and was
the location of houses and a tavern.
=Other places of interest=: Atwood-Higgins House (inquire at National
Seashore visitor centers); Wellfleet Historical Society museum on
Main Street; Marconi Beach.
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Truro and Provincetown
[Illustration: _Truro rowboats_ _Highland Light_ _Old Harbor Life
Saving Museum, Provincetown_ _Blessing of the fleet, Provincetown_]
=The narrowing of the Outer Cape and the power of nature readily
become evident in Truro and Provincetown. Here the way the wind and
the sea move sand around seems to be more noticeable than elsewhere
on the peninsula.=
=Even in the summer, Truro is relatively desolate for a Cape Cod
town, especially when compared with its bustling neighbor to the
north, Provincetown, with its writers, artists, actors, and tourists.=
Truro
Many towns claim many associations with the Pilgrims, and Truro can
certainly claim its own. Myles Standish and a small _Mayflower_
group discovered a basket of corn that had been buried by Indians on
what is now known as Corn Hill, and another group found a freshwater
spring near Pilgrim Lake (see pages 34-35).
The town, originally called Pamet and then Dangerfield, took the name
of Truro in 1709 because of its similarities to an area of seaside
moors and valleys by that name in England.
Whaling ships once worked out of Pamet Harbor on Cape Cod Bay,
and until the 1860s the town was a major port with its related
shipbuilding and fishing facilities and its saltworks. Most of the
men made their living at sea, and in 1841 the town lost 57 fishermen
in one storm. Today the small center of town has a few restaurants
and other facilities for travelers.
=Highland Light=—also known as Cape Cod Light—is the second
lighthouse constructed on the high bluff overlooking the Atlantic at
Truro. The first was built in 1797 and the present one in 1857. Today
the U.S. Coast Guard also maintains a radio beacon here to assist
ships in their navigation. Nearby is the Truro Historical Society’s
=Highland House Museum=.
The National Seashore has two short trails in the Pilgrim Heights
area of North Truro. =Pilgrim Spring Trail= takes you through the
area where a _Mayflower_ exploratory group supposedly found a
freshwater spring. =Small’s Swamp Trail= loops through a farmstead
that was abandoned in 1922; the Small family built their house in a
glacial kettle-hole.
=Other points of interest=: Pamet Cranberry Bog house; a Paul Revere
bell in the 1827 Bell Church on Meetinghouse Road; Head of the Meadow
Beach.
Provincetown
The town has been a prominent port and fishing community since
colonial days when wharves lined the shores and hundreds of sailing
ships filled the harbor. Today Provincetown is still a major port,
but cod, mackerel, and hake have long since replaced whales as the
major catch. And today, the town is full of art galleries, theaters,
sidewalk cafes, restaurants, and shops that come alive in the summer
when the population jumps from about 3,000 to 30,000.
Symbolic of Provincetown’s long history connected with the sea is the
town’s Blessing of the Fleet festival on the last weekend in June. In
the harbor, colorfully decorated fishing boats pass before a Roman
Catholic bishop to receive his blessing for a successful season, and
paraders wander through the narrow streets to honor Saint Peter, the
patron saint of fishermen.
Whereas the center of town is located on the Cape Cod Bay side of the
Cape, another center of interest, =Race Point=, is on the Atlantic
side. The National Seashore’s Province Lands Visitor Center on Race
Point Road has exhibits and films about the area’s natural and human
history and is the starting point for a bicycle trail (see page 96).
The center offers a variety of guided walks and talks and, from the
observation deck, views over the dunes of the ocean—and possibly of
whales.
In the summer, the =Old Harbor Life Saving Museum= at Race Point
Beach presents interpretive talks and displays about the Cape’s early
lifesaving activities. The station, on the National Register of
Historic Places, was moved to Race Point from Chatham in 1978.
For swimming and sunbathing, the National Park Service manages
beaches at Race Point and Herring Cove.
Back in town, the =Pilgrim Monument= rises 255 feet, a prominent
reminder that the Pilgrims landed here before heading to Plymouth.
Climb to the top of this granite tower and you are rewarded with
wonderful views of the Atlantic and of Cape Cod Bay with the Manomet
bluffs near Plymouth on the horizon. The ground-level museum houses
memorabilia of the town.
The =Provincetown Heritage Museum= at 356 Commercial Street has a
number of maritime paintings, a half-size model of the schooner _Rose
Dorothea_, the fishing boat _Charlotte_, and other memorabilia.
=Other points of interest=: the Seth Nickerson House, circa 1746,
at 72 Commercial Street; Provincetown Art Association and Museum;
Center for Coastal Studies; whale-watching excursions starting at the
MacMillan Wharf.
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Nearby Attractions
[Illustration: Mayflower _replica_, _Plymouth_
Awashonks _figurehead_, _New Bedford Whaling Museum_]
=The historical, cultural, recreational, and scenic attractions of
Cape Cod and the nearby area are so multitudinous they cannot be
listed in this book. Here, by community, are a few sites related
thematically to the National Seashore.=
Bourne
The 7-mile-long Cape Cod Canal links Massachusetts Bay with Buzzards
Bay and saves mariners 100 miles of traveling around the Cape in
hazardous waters. The Army Corps of Engineers manages the canal and
the 3 bridges that cross it. The canal was first envisioned by Myles
Standish in 1624, and 150 years later George Washington liked the
idea so much he ordered a survey. But nothing happened for years.
New York financier August Belmont took over the construction in 1909
after it had been worked on for nearly 30 years. He saw it through
to completion in 1914, but he lost millions of dollars on it. The
Federal Government took over the canal in 1928, and the Army Corps
deepened and widened it. Stop at the canal visitor center on Main
Street in Bourne Monday through Friday to see a model of the canal
and an audiovisual show. Canal boat tours are offered out of Onset
Bay Town Pier. Hikers and bicyclists can take a 14-mile roundtrip
along the canal.
Woods Hole
The National Marine Fisheries Service Aquarium has tanks of seals,
East Coast fish and shellfish, and exhibits about fisheries. The
Marine Biological Laboratory offers a tour in the summer of a lab and
of sea life in holding tanks. It also presents a slide show about its
scientific studies.
Mashpee
The Wampanoag Indian Museum on Mass. 130 has exhibits and artifacts
of early Wampanoag life (see pages 32-33).
Plymouth
In this Massachusetts Bay town you can see Plymouth Rock, the
traditional landing spot of the Pilgrims after they left Cape Cod
in 1620; go aboard a replica of the _Mayflower_, tour Plimoth
Plantation, a reconstruction of the Pilgrims’ first village; and
see a number of other historic sites, plus Cranberry World Visitor
Center’s exhibits on the cultivation and harvesting of cranberries.
New Bedford
Nantucket and New Bedford were the centers of New England’s whaling
industry in the 19th century. Today New Bedford is still a key
fishing port, but whaling is an historical attraction. The New
Bedford Whaling Museum on Johnny Cake Hill features the 89-foot
_Lagoda_, a half-scale model of a fully rigged whaling ship; a large
collection of scrimshaw; and a multitude of whaling artifacts. Nearby
is the Seaman’s Bethel, a sailors’ church with a pulpit in the shape
of a ship’s prow. The church figured in Herman Melville’s _Moby Dick_.
#############################################
Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket
[Illustration: _Osprey_
_Main Street, Nantucket_]
=While visiting Cape Cod, consider spending a day or two or more on
the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, summertime havens
that share much of the Cape’s cultural history and scenic ambience.
Both islands were settled in the 1600s by colonists from the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, both were major seaports linked with Cape
fisheries, and both have attracted vacationers since the steamboat
days of the 1800s. Despite these similarities, the islands are
distinctive.=
=Martha’s Vineyard is closest—only 7 miles and 45 minutes by ferry
from Woods Hole. Nantucket is about 30 miles from the Cape and 2
hours and 20 minutes by ferry from Hyannis. And don’t feel you have
to take your car. Bicycles, mopeds, taxis, and buses are available.=
Martha’s Vineyard
New England’s largest island, Martha’s Vineyard is 24 miles long
and 10 miles wide. Vineyard Haven was a major port until the Cape
Cod Canal re-routed ship traffic in 1914. Today, the ferry stops at
Vineyard Haven and, in the summer, at Oak Bluffs, an old Methodist
camp meeting site.
The Vineyard’s eclectic architecture includes Victorian gingerbread
houses and cottages in Oak Bluffs, sturdy white clapboard sea
captains’ houses in Edgartown, a mix of styles in Vineyard Haven,
fishing shanties in Menemsha, and cedar-shingled cottages throughout
the island.
Examine whaling artifacts at the Dukes County Historical Museum in
Edgartown, look for ospreys at the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary,
inspect solar- and wind-powered energy sources at the Windfarm
Museum, and visit Gay Head’s scenic cliffs overlooking the Atlantic.
Nantucket
Nantucket is the name not only of the island but of the county and
of the main town on the island, which is 14 miles long and 3½ miles
wide. The island is known for its more than 800 houses built between
1740 and 1840, for its brick sidewalks and cobblestone streets, for
its encircling 55 miles of beautiful beaches, and for its whaling and
Quaker heritage.
Nantucket’s architecture reflects the great wealth garnered by its
whaling merchants and captains. The most notable structures are the
Three Bricks and the Two Greeks, mansions built across from each
other by Joseph Starbuck and William Hadwen respectively.
Be sure to see the old whaleboat and other seafaring artifacts at
the Whaling Museum; ship captain portraits, old baskets, and other
historical objects at the Peter Foulger Museum; the elegant ballroom
in the William Hadwen House. These sites are administered by the
Nantucket Historical Association (508-228-1894). You may also visit
a re-created beach station at the Nantucket Life Saving Museum. And
don’t be startled if you hear Nantucketers refer to the mainland as
America. It’s a sign of their isolation and independence.
Information
Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 1698, Beach Road,
Vineyard Haven, MA 02568-1698; 508-693-0085. Nantucket Visitor
Services, 25 Federal St., Nantucket, MA 02554-3573; 508-228-0925.
#############################################
Safety and Other Management Concerns
[Illustration: _Deer tick magnified_]
=Most of the regulations enforced within the National Seashore
concern the protection of natural and cultural resources. Others deal
with personal safety. Please obey them.=
● State law requires the wearing of seatbelts by drivers and
passengers in Massachusetts.
● Do not disturb or damage any natural features, including flowers,
trees, animals, dunes, marine animal remains, or cultural features,
such as historic structures and objects. It is permissible to collect
shells, but metal detectors are not allowed.
● Keep beaches, trails, roadsides, and other areas clean. Put all
litter in trash receptacles or carry it away with you.
● Motorized vehicles, including mopeds, are not allowed on paved
bicycle trails. Over-sand vehicles must be used only on designated
sand routes, and a permit—which may be obtained at the Race Point
Ranger Station—is required. Indiscriminate off-road driving is
prohibited.
● At the ocean, be alert for underwater obstacles. Keep children
within reach. Be wary of too much sun exposure. Glass containers,
rafts, rubber tubes, snorkels, and masks are not permitted on
lifeguarded beaches. Public nudity is prohibited within the National
Seashore.
● Kite flying is prohibited within 500 feet of posted shorebird
nesting areas.
=_Rip currents, often incorrectly called rip tides,
occur when wave-driven currents surge back to sea through gaps in an
offshore bar, then dissipate quickly in deeper water. To escape a rip
current, swim parallel to shore before heading in. Never swim against
a rip current!_=
● Keep pets under physical restraint at all times. Leashes must not
exceed 6 feet. Pets are not allowed in public buildings, in picnic
areas, on lifeguarded beaches, on nature trails, in posted shorebird
nesting areas, and on beaches or in water of freshwater ponds.
● At ponds gasoline-powered motorboats, glass containers, and any use
of soaps and detergents are prohibited.
● Open fires are not allowed except when authorized by a permit,
which can be obtained at visitor centers. Permits are not required
for stoves using manufactured fuels, or for charcoal grills when they
are used in designated picnic areas at Beech Forest, Pilgrim Heights,
Great Island, and Doane Rock, or on sandy or rock beaches bordering
tidewater.
● Avoid walking in sand dunes so as not to affect the fragile
vegetation. Because sand collapses easily, do not climb cliffs and
sandy slopes or dig deep holes in the sand.
● Be alert for ticks. A bite may transmit various ailments. The deer
tick is known to carry Lyme disease. Inspect yourself carefully if
you walk through grass or brush.
● Upland game and migratory waterfowl may be hunted in certain
National Seashore areas in specified seasons. Federal, state, and
local laws apply. Ask for information on hunting opportunities and
regulations.
=Note=: Rangers can provide first aid assistance. The closest health
clinics are in Provincetown, Wellfleet, and Harwich, and the nearest
hospital is in Hyannis.
#############################################
Armchair Explorations
[Illustration: (Beach scene with beach umbrella.)]
=Eastern National Park & Monument Association, a nonprofit group that
supports interpretive and scientific efforts at Cape Cod National
Seashore, offers books, maps, and other Cape Cod items for sale at
the park and by mail. For a free list of Cape Cod publications,
including a special selection for children, write to the association
at Salt Pond Visitor Center, Rt. 6, Eastham, MA 02642-2113. For a
list of official handbooks about other national parks, write to the
Division of Publications, National Park Service, P.O. Box 50, Harpers
Ferry, WV 25425-0050.=
Here is a partial list of books and booklets about Cape Cod and
related subjects:
O’Brien, Greg, editor. _A Guide to Nature on Cape Cod and the
Islands._ Written in cooperation with Cape Cod Museum of Natural
History. Penguin Books, 1990.
Beston, Henry. _Outermost House._ Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1928.
Reprint First Owl Book Edition, 1992.
Burling, Francis P. _The Birth of Cape Cod National Seashore._ The
Leyden Press, 1979.
Clark, Admont G. _Lighthouses of Cape Code, Martha’s Vineyard and
Nantucket: Their History and Lore._ Parnassus Imprints, 1992.
Coulombe, Deborah A. _Seaside Naturalist: A Guide to Nature Study at
the Seashore._ Prentice-Hall, 1984.
Dalton, J. W. _The Life Savers of Cape Cod._ Barta Press, 1902.
Reprint Parnassus Imprints, 1991.
Finch, Robert. _Common Ground: A Naturalist’s Cape Cod._ David R.
Godine, 1981; _Outlands: Journeys to the Outer Edges of Cape Cod_.
David R. Godine, 1986; _The Primal Place_. W. W. Norton, 1983.
Hay, John. _The Great Beach._ Doubleday, 1963.
Kaye, Glen. _Cape Cod: the Story Behind the Scenery._ KC
Publications, 1980.
Kittredge, Henry C. _Cape Cod: Its People and Their History._
Houghton Mifflin, 1930. Reprint Parnassus Imprints, 1987.
Martin, Kenneth. _Some Very Handsome Work._ Eastern National Park and
Monument Association, 1991.
Oldale, Robert. _Cape Cod and the Islands: The Geologic Story._
Parnassus Imprints, 1992.
Penniman, Augusta. _Penniman Journal: A Whaling Voyage._ Eastern
National Park & Monument Association, 1988.
Quinn, William P. _Shipwrecks Around Cape Cod._ Lower Cape
Publishing, 1973.
Teal, John and Mildred. _Life and Death of the Salt Marsh._ 1969.
Reprint Ballantine Books, 1991.
Thoreau, Henry David. _Cape Cod._ Houghton Mifflin, 1864, and Penguin
State, 1865. Reprint Parnassus Imprints with introduction by Robert
Finch, 1984. Reprint Penguin Books with introduction by Paul Theroux,
1987.
Waldron, Nan Turner. _Journey to Outermost House._ Butterfly & Wheel
Publishing, 1991.
Weinstein-Farson, Laurie. _The Wampanoag._ Chelsea House, 1989.
Willison, George F. _Saints and Strangers._ Reynal & Hitchcock, 1945.
Reprint Parnassus Imprints, 1983.
#############################################
Index
_Numbers in italics refer to photographs, illustrations, or maps._
=_Andrea Doria_=, 61
=Atwood-Higgins House=, _38-39_
=Barnstable=, _61_, _94_
=Beaches=, 25, 37, 40, 73, 92, 99, 101
=Beech Forest=, 97, 99
=Belmont, August=, 65, 106
=Beston, Henry=, 7, 14, 71, _72_, 73, 109
=Bicycling=, 24, 96, 101, 105
=Birds=, _66-67_, 81, _98-99_, _107_, 111;
shooting, 70;
watching, 98-99, 101
=Blackfish Creek=, 30, 58
=Boating=, 92, 100
=Botkin, Henry=, 33
=Bourne=, 106;
bridge, 65, 76
=Bradford, William=, 31
=Brewster=, 58, 91, 100-101
=Bridges=, 65, 76
=Buzzards Bay=, 70, 106
=Cape Cod=, _20-21_;
Bay, 46, 53, 58;
Branch Railroad, 70;
Canal, 61, 62-63, 65, 106;
history, 69;
House, 7, _38-39_;
Light, 62, 64, _104_;
Museum of Natural History, 80, 100, 101;
School of Art, 70;
Stranding Network, 80
=Cape Cod National Seashore=:
camping, 91;
founding of, 17-18, 80;
headquarters, 103;
location, 86;
map, _88-89_;
recreation, 92-99;
transportation, 87;
visitor centers, 90
=Captains, ship=, _50-51_, 58-59
=Channing, William=, 69
=Chatham=, 28-29, 62, 64, 65, 93, _100_, 101
=Clams=, _93_
=Cleveland, Grover=, 70
=Coast Guard, U.S.=, 64, 65;
Beach, 24, 25, _30_, 32, 40, _92_
=Cobb, Elijah=, 50
=_Columbia_=, _50_
=Commerce=, 47, 52-53, 69, 75, 76
=Cottages=, summer, _76_
=Cranberries=, _68_, _74-75_, 76
=Crosby, Charles=, _50_
=Crosby, James E.=, _50_
=de Bry, Theodore=, 32
=de Champlain, Samuel=, 32, 101
=Dennis=, 61
=Dunes=, _4-5_, _29_, 30, 46
=Eastham=, 34, 69, 101-2;
Coast Guard Station, 36;
visitor center, 30, 90, 102.
_See also_ Nauset Marsh
=Eldridge, Asa=, _51_
=Elizabeth Islands=, 24, 26
=Environmental education=, 80, 90, 100
=Erosion=, _28-29_, 36-37, 40-41
=Fish=, _32_, _42-44_, 45-47, 81;
industry, _53_, _54-55_, 93
=Federal Migratory Bird Treaties, 1916=, 70
=Gale, October 1841=, 59, 64
=Geology=, 23-30, 36-41, 46;
maps, _26-29_
=Georges Banks=, 25, 59, 64
=Glaciation=, 7, _23-24_, _26-27_, 46.
_See also_ Geology
=Golf=, 71
=Gosnold, Bartholomew=, 46-47
=Grand Banks=, 47, 59
=Grass=, 30-31, _42_, _43_, _45_, 80
=Gravestones=, 51, _59_
“=Graveyards of the Atlantic=”, 59.
_See also_ Shipwrecks
=_Great Beach, The_=, 71
=Great Blizzard, 1978=, 15, 40
=Great Island=, 30, 103
=Great Pond=, 27
=Gulf Stream=, 46
=Hall, Henry=, 74
=Harding Beach=, 101
=Hay, John=, 71, 109
=Head of the Meadow Beach=, 25
=Herring River=, _15_
=Highland Light=, 62, 64, 71, _104_
=Hiking=, 96-97, 103, 104
=Hitchcock, Edward=, 46
=Horseback riding=, 97
=_House on Nauset Marsh_=, 71
=Howe, James=, 76
=Howes, Osborn=, 50
=Jeremy Point=, 28, 30
=Jonathan Young Windmill=, _101_
=Kendrick, John=, 50
=Kennedy, John F.=, 17
=Kittredge, Henry=, 58, 59
=Labrador Current=, 46
=Laurentide ice sheet=, 23, _26_
=Lieutenant Island=, 58
=Life Saving Service, U.S.=, _62-63_, 64, 65, _105_
=Lighthouses=, _17_, _62-63_, 64, 65
=Lodging=, 91
=Lower Cape=, 24, 25, 46, 86
=Maps=, _26-29_, _33-35_, _60_, _87-89_
=Mashpee=, 106
=Marconi, Guglielmo=, _78_
=Marconi Wireless Station=, 28, _78-79_, 97, 103
=Martha’s Vineyard=, 26, 107
=_Mayflower_=, _34-35_, _106_
=_Messenger_=, _60_
=Metacomet= (King Philip), _36_
=Mid-Cape Highway=, 76
=Monomoy Island=, 30, 40, 59, 81;
Point, 28;
National Wildlife Refuge, 80, 101
=_Morgan, Charles W._=, _52_, 53
=Myers, Rowena=, 13-14
=Nantucket=, 26, 46, 107;
Sound, 53, 70
=Native Americans=, 31, _32-33_, 45, 54
=Nauset=:
Beach, 30, 73, 100;
Light, _17_, _62-63_;
Marsh, 8, _10-11_, _19_, 71, 96, 103
=Nearby attractions=, 106-7
=Nickerson, Roland C. State Park=, 91, 101
=North Beach=, _22_, 28-29, 30
=Old Harbor Life Saving Museum=, 105
=Old Schoolhouse Museum=, _102_
=Oliver, Mary=, 71
=O’Neill, Eugene=, 28, 71
=Orleans=, 93, 100
=Outer Beach=, 7, 15, 25, 86
=Outer Cape=, 28, 37, 40
=_Outermost House, The_=, 40, 71, _72-73_, 109
=Paddock, Ichabod=, 53
=Pamet=:
Harbor, 30;
River, 24, 29
=_Paulding_=, 61
=Peaked Hill Bars=, 41, 59;
Coast Guard Station, _28-29_
=Penniman, Augusta=, 49, 109
=Penniman, Edward=, 49, 102-3
=Penniman House=, _49_, _102_
=Pilgrim Monument=, _2-3_, 105
=Pilgrims=, _33_, _34-35_, 65, 102, 104, 106
=Pine, pitch=, _31_
=Plants=, _42_, _43_
=Pleasant Bay=, 29, 70
=Plymouth=, _34-35_, 102, 106
=Ponds=:
kettle, 24, 25, 27;
salt, 27, 30
=Population=, 31, _32-33_, 45, 54, 69-71, 76, 86, 104.
=_Portland_=, 61
=Prence, Thomas=, 102
=Province Lands=, 29, 46, 96;
Visitor Center, 90, 95, 104-5
=Provincetown=, _2-3_, 48, 54, 70-71, _77_, 93, 94, 104-5;
Harbor, 30, 47, 53, 65;
Hook, 28, 30, 41;
Players, 70-71;
topography, 30, 40-41, 59
=Race Point=, 59, 62, 64, 95, 99, 104-5;
Ranger Station, 90
=Railroad=, 65, _70_, 76
=_Red Jacket_=, _51_
=Revenue Cutter Service=, 64
=Rich, Shebnah=, 47
=Richardson, Wyman=, 71
=Roosevelt, Theodore=, 79
=Safety & health=, 108
=Sagamore bridge=, 65, 76
=Saltonstall, Leverett=, 17
=Salt Pond Visitor Center=, 24, 90, 102
=Salt marshes=, 30-31, _42-43_, 45, 80
=Saltworks=, _56-57_
=Sandy Neck=, 53
=Sears, John=, 56
=Shipping artifacts=, _50-51_
=Shipwrecks=, 59, _60-61_, 64-65
=Smith, John=, 47
=Smith, Walter=, _71_
=South Wellfleet=, 59
=_Sparrowhawk_=, 59, 60-61
=_Speedwell_=, 35
=Stage Harbor=, _32_, 33
=Standish, Myles=, 34, _36_, 65, 102, 104, 106
=_Stockholm_=, 61
=Stony Brook Mill=, 100-101
=Storms=, 15, _28-29_, 40, 59, 64
=Thoreau, Henry David=, 54, 57, 58, 69, 71, _72_, 109
=Tides=, 15
=Topography=, 24-31, 36-41, 59, 76, 80-81, 101, 102
=Town crier=, _71_
=Trails=, 96, _97_, 103, 104
=Transportation=, 87
=Truro=, 24, 61, 64, 69, 76, 104
=Turner, C. E.=, _50_
=_Ulysses_=, _60-61_
=Upper Cape=, 24, 88
=Wampanoag Indians=, _32-33_, 45, 54, 106
=Washington, George=, 65
=Water sports=, 92
=Weather=, 86-87
=Wellfleet=, 30, 54, 69, 93, 103;
topography, 24, 101;
whaling, 48, 58
=Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary=, 103
=Whales=, _48_, _58_, 80, _94-95_
=Whaling=, _48-49_, 53, 58, 104
=_Whydah_=, 59, 61
=Wildflowers=, _82-83_
=Windmills=, _47_, _56-57_, _101_, 102
=Wireless telegraphy=, 28, _78-79_, 97, 103
=Woodlands=, 31, 46
=Yarmouth=, 61
[Illustration: _Sharp-tailed sparrow_]
=_Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data_=
Finch, Robert, 1943-
Cape Cod: its natural and cultural history: a Guide to Cape Cod
National Seashore. Massachusetts / by Robert Finch; produced by the
Division of Publications, National Park Service, U.S. Department of
the Interior.
p. cm.—(Official National Park handbook, Cape Cod National Seashore;
handbook 148)
Includes index.
1. Cape Cod National Seashore (Mass.)—Guidebooks. I. United States.
National Park Service. Division of Publications. II. Title. III.
Series: Handbook (United States. National Park Service. Division of
Publications); 148.
F72.C3F55 1993 917.44920443-dc20 92-40414 CIP Supt. of Docs, no.:
129.9/5: 148
ISBN 0-912627-56-5
⚝ GPO: 1997—417-646/40503
Printed on recycled paper
Reprint 1997
National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior
The National Park Service expresses its appreciation to all those
persons who made the preparation and production of this handbook
possible. The Service especially thanks Eastern National Park and
Monument Association and The Friends of Cape Cod National Seashore
for their financial support of this publication. All photos
and artwork not credited below come from the files of Cape Cod
National Seashore. Some materials are restricted against commercial
reproduction. The book was designed by Richard Sheaff.
John Arsenault 95 whale watchers
Frank Balthis, 106 _Mayflower_
Tony Bonanno 62-63 Nauset C. G. Station, 104 rowboats
Tom Cawley, 43 sea-lavender and terrapin, 66-67 snowy egret, ruddy
turnstone, and willet, 82-83 nightshade, heather, beach plum, cactus,
dewberry, St. Johnswort, bellflower, mayflower, aster, laurel,
star-flower, and cypress spurge
Concord Free Public Library 73 Thoreau
Donald Demers 38-39 Atwood-Higgins art, mortise
R. R. Donnelley GeoSystems 87 map, 88-89
Steve Dunwell back cover, 17, 19, 22, 68, 90 girl, 93 fisherman, 107
Nantucket
Roger Everett 66-67 dunlin, spotted sandpiper, merganser, yellowlegs,
canvasback, eider, green-backed heron, sanderlings
Jeff Gnass 47, 102 schoolhouse, 105 station
Laurel Guadazno 82 goldenrod
Vincent Guadazno 59
William Hartley 16, 42-43 salt hay, snail, sea stars, scallop,
lobster, anemone, eelgrass, sea robin, hermit, jelly, rock crabs, sea
lettuce, 44, 66 osprey and oystercatcher, 82 water lily
Steven Heaslip, Cape Cod Times 28 inset
Historical Society of Old Yarmouth 51 Eldridge
William Johnson 6, 30, 53, 84-85, 86 umbrella, 92 lifeguard, 96
bikers, 101 windmill, 102 Penniman, 103 Great Island, 104 lighthouse,
109
Library of Congress, 32 Debry, 33 Champlain map, 36 both
Brad Luther, Coastal News Publications 60 map
Ralph Mackenzie 2-3, 9, 13, 18, 67 common terns and great blue heron,
87 artist, 100, 101 house, 105 blessing
Mariners Museum, Newport News 51 _Red Jacket_
Linda Minnich 58
David Muench 10-11, 12, 15,91 swamp
Mystic Seaport 46, 52
New Bedford Whaling Museum 48 whale, 106 figurehead
Dorothy Michele Novick 33 domed shelters, 75 cranberry art, 87 leaf,
90 crab, 93 shellfish, 94-95 whales, 98-99, 107 hawk, 108 tick, 111
Laurence Parent 97 swamp trail
Peabody Museum of Salem 50 Howes, 60-61 _Ulysses_
Pilgrim Society 33 treaty, 35 _Mayflower_
Mae Scanlan 8, 103 door
Richard Sheaff Collection 34 Pilgrims landing, 86 postcard and
driver, 92 swimmer, 93 lure, 96 bike art
Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities 63
Chatham crew, 71, 76, 77
Spaceshots, Inc. 20-21 Landsat Cape Cod image
Tom Till front cover
Connie Toops 66 ring-billed gull
Robert Tope 26-27 waning glacier
Glenn Van Nimwegen 4-5, 14, 31, 37, 90 tracks
As the Nation’s principal conservation agency, the Department of
the Interior has responsibility for most of our nationally owned
public lands and natural resources. This includes fostering sound
use of our land and water resources; protecting our fish, wildlife,
and biological diversity; preserving the environmental and cultural
values of our national parks and historical places; and providing
for the enjoyment of life through outdoor recreation. The Department
assesses our energy and mineral resources and works to ensure that
their development is in the best interest of all our people by
encouraging stewardship and citizen participation in their care.
The Department also has a major responsibility for American Indian
reservation communities and for people who live in island territories
under U.S. Administration.
Cape Cod
[Illustration: (Woman on Seashore.)]
=_Illustrated features and nearly 200 color photographs and historic
images complement Robert Finch’s narrative about Cape Cod’s rich
natural and cultural history. Maps and a guide section make this
a practical handbook for travelers to the Cape and the National
Seashore._=
ISBN 0-912627-56-5
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPE COD : ITS NATURAL AND
CULTURAL HISTORY ***
