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.
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.
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.
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.