A Cape Identity

What makes people identify with the geographical area where they live? Geography, Ryden reminds us, is more than buildings and dirt. Humanistic geographers speak of a strong sense of rootedness and identification with a location, a feeling that one is a member of a particular community based on living in a particular place.[1]

Identification with place is often expressed as a sense of being “at home” in a particular locale. It is the question of “Who am I?” answered with, “This is home. This is where I belong."

Cape Cod is easily seen as a distinctive region. For most, it is simply “the Cape.” People speak of retiring to the Cape, or of vacationing on the Cape. The Cape is a peninsula, but thanks to the Cape Cod Canal, it is actually an island, and there is something of an island mentality here. People refer to the rest of Massachusetts as the mainland. To go there is to go “off Cape.”

I once mentioned to a friend that I had been listening to the Cape Cod classical station (WFCC) as I headed out for a trip back to New York, but that I had soon lost the station. “It disappears after you go over the bridge,” she said. “Like Brigadoon.” Though meant jokingly, her comment suggested the idea that the Cape is a separate, unique, and even magical place.

A prominent physical symbol such a river or bridge may give a sense of boundary to a region. For Cape Codders, the Cape Cod Canal and the bridges that cross it are clear boundary markers. They separate “the Cape” from “Off Cape,” although in reality, a part of the Town of Bourne and a small part of the Town of Sandwich are west of the Canal. Despite this fact, in almost everyone's mind, "the Cape" begins on the east side of the bridges.

1. Kent C. Ryden. Mapping the Invisible Landscape: Folklore, Writing, and the Sense of Place. (Iowa City: Iowa University Press, 1993) .

A map posted on a Cape Cod blog. Some people have strong feelings about where the "real Cape" begins.