Cape Cod: Exploring a Sense of Place

 

“To live in a place is to see and know what the people who lived there before you did with it; to hear talk about a place is to understand what else happened there that has been deemed worth remembering.” [1]

           

“Place is space rich enough to provide travel for the mind while the body sits still, space so full of the past that it forces people to become responsible for its future. History is the essence of the idea of place.” [2]

 

 

Few places are richer in history than Cape Cod. Some claim Leif Eiriksson and his Vikings stopped here about 1007. There is even a housing development near the Bass River with street names like Norseman Drive and Saga Road, but, so far at least, no archeological evidence proves the Vikings sailed this far south.

 

The first documented sighting of the Cape was by Giovanni de Verazzano in 1524, on his way north from visiting New York harbor, ensuring that a bridge would be named for him there. The Cape owes its name, however, to Batholomew Gosnold who sailed from England in 1602 looking for a good place to start a colony. He landed in Maine and continued down the coast until he reached Provincetown Harbor, landing there in May 1602. He named its tip “Cape Cod” for the great catch of fish the crewmen had there. Gosnold’s party returned to England after this trip, but Gosnold sailed to North America again a few years later as part of the Virginia Company with Captain John Smith, founding the Jamestown Colony in 1607. Then in 1609 Henry Hudson stopped off at the Cape before visiting New York and sailing up the beautiful river named for him.

 

It was the Pilgrims whose visit to Cape Cod made a lasting impression. They sailed the Mayflower into Cape Cod Bay in 1620 and anchored in Provincetown harbor. Here at the tip of the Cape, the Pilgrims drew up and signed the Mayflower Compact, today considered a founding document of democracy. They spent a few weeks exploring the area, helping themselves to a buried stash of Native corn and then having their first encounter with the Nausets, whose territory they were in. The Nausets shot off a volley of arrows, and the Pilgrims fired back with their muskets, but no one was injured. A plaque* marks the spot today at First Encounter Beach in Eastham. Finally the Pilgrims got back on the Mayflower and sailed along the coast of the bay and then north on the mainland, finally choosing to settle at Plymouth.

 

English settlers came permanently to Cape Cod in the 1630s, founding Sandwich, Barnstable, and Yarmouth by 1639, naming all three towns for places in England.  Today, names of early settlers are everywhere. The town of Brewster honors Elder William Brewster, religious leader of the Pilgrims. Dennis is named for its first minister, Rev. Josiah Dennis. Nickerson State Park is named for a descendant of one of Yarmouth’s first settlers. The geography is thick with names of early settlers: Ryder, Crow and Crowell, Cole, Crosby, Eldridge, Freeman, Baker, Newcomb, Mayo, Atwood, Palmer, Sears, Small and Smalley, Wood, Doane, Akin, Ellis, Wing, Perry, Snow, Sparrow, Taylor and more are remembered in the names of roads, lanes, and drives, ponds, bogs, coves, and beaches. Many descendants of these settlers still live here.

 

*There are actually two plaques commemorating the First Encounter.