Cape Cod National Seashore

The Pilgrims came ashore on Cape Cod before they ever saw Plymouth. In November 1620, the Mayflower anchored in what is now Provincetown Harbor, and the passengers signed the Mayflower Compact on board. They spent about 5 weeks exploring the outer Cape before moving across the bay to settle at Plymouth.

That is why so many Pilgrim images belong on a Cape Cod board. Most of them are prints and paintings made long after the fact, in the 1800s, when the Pilgrims became a national founding story. They show neat clothing, calm faces and a dramatic landing. The real crossing was cold, crowded and frightening, and about half the passengers died that first winter. Provincetown later built the Pilgrim Monument to mark the landing. Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone in 1907, and the granite tower was finished in 1910. It stands over the town and turns up in nearly every view of the harbor.

The rest of the board covers Barnstable County, which is to say the Cape itself, from the canal out to Provincetown. Fishing villages, saltworks, windmills, lighthouses and long beaches fill the older pictures. The Cape was a working place of fishermen, sailors and farmers long before it was a summer place. The railroad and later the automobile brought the tourists.

The Cape Cod National Seashore was set up in 1961 to protect about 40 miles of the outer Cape, including dunes, marshes, beaches and old buildings. President John F. Kennedy, whose family had a home in Hyannis Port, signed the law. Nantucket, out across Nantucket Sound, has its own section. It was the whaling capital of the world for a time in the late 1700s and early 1800s, before New Bedford took the lead.

When you look at the shoreline pictures, notice how much the Cape moves. Sand cliffs on the outer beach wear away a few feet in many years, and lighthouses have had to be moved back from the edge. A picture from 1900 and a picture from 1940 of the same spot can show a different coast.