46 Fun Facts About Cape Cod

Cape Cod forms the southern boundary of which body of water that stretches northeast to Nova Scotia?

The Gulf of Maine runs from Cape Cod northeast to Nova Scotia's Cape Sable, taking in Massachusetts Bay; Buzzards Bay, on the Cape's southwest side, lies outside it.

Which English explorer coined the name Cape Cod in 1602?

Bartholomew Gosnold named the cape in 1602 after the abundant cod his crew caught; the name, the ninth-oldest surviving English place-name in the US, first applied only to the tip.

Cape Cod is legally coextensive with which Massachusetts county?

Barnstable County's borders match the Cape exactly; its 2020 census population was 228,996, with a median age above 50, the highest of any Massachusetts county.

How many towns make up Cape Cod?

Cape Cod's 15 towns run from the canal to Provincetown at the tip; Barnstable, the largest, is the only one with a city form of government.

Since 1914, what has separated most of the peninsula from the mainland?

The Cape Cod Canal, a man-made waterway opened to traffic in July 1914 and finished in 1916, cut the peninsula off so completely that many agencies treat the Cape as an island.

Which two highway bridges carry traffic across the Cape Cod Canal?

The Sagamore Bridge carries Route 6 and the Bourne Bridge carries Route 28 across the canal; a vertical-lift railroad bridge near Buzzards Bay village is the third crossing.

Which financier directed construction of the working canal that began in 1909?

August Belmont Jr., who also financed New York's first subway, broke ground in 1909 and opened the canal in 1914; tolls disappointed and the federal government bought it in 1928.

Where did the Pilgrims make their first landing on November 11, 1620, before moving on to Plymouth?

They had sighted the Cape two days earlier. The Mayflower Compact was drawn up and signed while the ship lay in Provincetown Harbor.

The Pilgrim Monument at the tip of the Cape holds what architectural distinction?

At 252 feet the Pilgrim Monument is the tallest all-granite structure in the United States; Theodore Roosevelt laid its cornerstone in 1907 and William Howard Taft dedicated it in 1910.

Which Italian tower served as the model for the Pilgrim Monument?

The Torre del Mangia, the 14th-century bell tower of Siena's Palazzo Pubblico, gave the Provincetown monument its tall, slender form and corbelled crown; the copy commemorates the 1620 landfall.

Which president created the Cape Cod National Seashore in 1961?

John F. Kennedy signed the Cape Cod National Seashore Act on August 7, 1961, protecting outer-Cape beaches, dunes and marshes from Chatham to Provincetown that were being carved into house lots.

In which Cape Cod village is the Kennedy Compound, JFK's 'summer White House'?

Joseph P. Kennedy bought the Hyannis Port house in 1928; the compound of family homes on Nantucket Sound served as JFK's base during the 1960 campaign and his presidency.

From which Cape Cod town did Marconi make the first US transatlantic wireless transmission?

Theodore Roosevelt used the equipment for the 1903 message to King Edward VII. The beach below the bluffs is now called Marconi Beach.

Which is the oldest and tallest lighthouse on Cape Cod?

Highland Light in Truro, first lit in 1797 under George Washington's authorization, is the Cape's oldest station; its 1857 brick tower rises 66 feet.

Why were two of Cape Cod's lighthouses, including Nauset Light, moved inland in 1996?

Coastal erosion threatened to topple them: Highland Light was 110 feet from the sea and Nauset Light just 37 feet from the bluff when the movers arrived.

Which Cape Cod town, founded in 1637, is the oldest on the Cape?

It is home to the Dexter Grist Mill, Hoxie House and the Sandwich Glass Museum, a legacy of Deming Jarves's colored lead-glass works.

Which Cape Cod town is home to a federally recognized Wampanoag tribe?

The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe has its headquarters in Mashpee, a town that began in 1660 as a 'praying town' reserved for Wampanoag converts.

Which famous ocean-research organization, founded in 1930, is based in a village of Falmouth on Cape Cod?

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, founded in 1930, is the largest independent oceanographic research institution in the US and operates the deep-diving submersible Alvin.

Robert Ballard of Cape Cod's famous ocean-research institution co-led the 1985 expedition that found which famous wreck?

RMS Titanic was located off Newfoundland on September 1, 1985 by a joint French-American team led by Ballard and IFREMER's Jean-Louis Michel.

What kind of bats does the Cape Cod Baseball League use?

The Cape Cod Baseball League switched from aluminum to wooden bats in 1985, giving pro scouts a truer read on hitters; well over 1,000 league alumni have reached the majors.

In what year was the Cape Cod Baseball League formally organized with four teams?

The league was formally organized in 1923 with Falmouth, Osterville, Hyannis and Chatham as founding clubs, though Cape teams had been playing each other since at least 1885.

How long is the Falmouth Road Race, run on Cape Cod on the third Sunday of August?

7 miles, from the Cap'n Kidd bar in Woods Hole to the Brothers Four in Falmouth Heights, as bartender Tommy Leonard dreamed it up; about 100 people ran the first one in 1973.

Which singer's 1957 record 'Old Cape Cod' became the peninsula's unofficial anthem?

Patti Page's version was written by Claire Rothrock, Milton Yakus and Allan Jeffrey, and Mercury released it as the B-side of 'Wondering' in April 1957.

Which naturalist wrote the book Cape Cod, based on visits from 1849 and published posthumously in 1865?

Henry David Thoreau made four trips to the Cape between 1849 and 1857, walking the outer beach and finding it nearly treeless; Cape Cod appeared in 1865, three years after his death.

Which American painter owned a summer house in Truro and painted Corn Hill and Cottages at North Truro?

Edward Hopper built a house in South Truro in 1934 and summered there for three decades; his Cape canvases include Corn Hill (1930), Rich's House and Cold Storage Plant.

Kalmus Beach on the Mid-Cape is named after Herbert Kalmus, an inventor of what?

Herbert Kalmus co-founded the Technicolor company in 1915 and developed its color film process; he left the beach to the Town of Barnstable on condition it never be developed.

Which town at the 'elbow' of the Cape has become known as a hub of great white shark activity?

Chatham, at the Cape's elbow, sits beside the Monomoy gray seal colony that draws great white sharks; a January 1987 nor'easter famously broke through its barrier beach.

Which Cape Cod town contains First Encounter Beach, site of a 1620 Pilgrim-Wampanoag skirmish?

First Encounter Beach in Eastham marks where a Mayflower exploring party and Nauset Wampanoag exchanged arrows and musket fire on December 8, 1620, before the Pilgrims sailed on to Plymouth.

Cape Cod Potato Chips, founded in 1980, is headquartered in which village?

Steve Bernard opened Cape Cod Potato Chips in a small Hyannis storefront in 1980 with a $3,000 slicer; the kettle-cooked chips are made at the company's factory on Breed's Hill Road in Hyannis.

Which Yale president coined the term 'Cape Cod house' after a visit in 1800?

Timothy Dwight IV, Yale's president from 1795 to 1817, described the low, steep-roofed, central-chimney houses in his Travels in New England and coined the term after his 1800 visit.

The Cape Cod Rail Trail replaced abandoned railroad tracks east of which village in 1978?

The Cape Cod Rail Trail opened in 1978 on an abandoned railroad line running from South Dennis to Eastham, later extended east to Wellfleet and west to Yarmouth; Falmouth's Shining Sea Bikeway opened in 1975.

How far does Cape Cod extend into the Atlantic Ocean?

Cape Cod hooks 65 miles out into the Atlantic, from one to twenty miles wide, with hundreds of miles of shoreline; its highest point, Pine Hill in Bourne, is only 306 feet.

Geologically, most of Cape Cod is made of what?

Cape Cod is built of glacial deposits: the Laurentide ice sheet's terminal moraine ridges and the outwash plains in front of them, left when the ice retreated about 18,000 years ago.

Which Portuguese explorer, sailing for Spain in 1525, called the Cape 'Cabo de las Arenas'?

Estêvão Gomes, a Portuguese pilot in Spanish service, charted the New England coast in 1525 and labeled the Cape 'Cabo de las Arenas', the cape of sands.

Which painter opened Provincetown's Cape Cod School of Art, launching its art colony?

Charles Webster Hawthorne's Cape Cod School of Art, founded in Provincetown at the turn of the century, taught outdoor figure painting and seeded the colony that later drew the Provincetown Players and Eugene O'Neill.

Roughly how many acres does the Cape Cod National Seashore cover?

The seashore protects about 43,600 acres, nearly 40 miles of the outer Cape's Atlantic shore from Chatham to Provincetown, including Nauset Light, Coast Guard Beach and Race Point.

Which national marine sanctuary lies about five miles north of Provincetown at Cape Cod's tip?

Stellwagen Bank's rich feeding grounds make Provincetown one of the top whale-watching ports on the East Coast.

Which two novelists made their homes in Provincetown and Barnstable?

Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut lived in Provincetown and Barnstable; Julie Harris, Louis Brandeis and skater Todd Eldredge also called the Cape home.

What year did the Bourne and Sagamore bridges open to traffic?

Both were Public Works Administration projects that opened on June 22, 1935, replacing drawbridges that had bottlenecked canal traffic.

Which four towns make up the Upper Cape, the part closest to the mainland?

Bourne, Sandwich, Falmouth and Mashpee form the Upper Cape nearest the canal; Barnstable, Yarmouth and Dennis are the Mid-Cape, and Eastham to Provincetown the Outer Cape.

Which training institution sits in the Bourne village of Buzzards Bay beside the canal?

Massachusetts Maritime Academy, founded in 1891, trains merchant-marine officers on a campus at Taylor's Point in Buzzards Bay, where the canal meets the bay; Bourne split from Sandwich in 1884.

In which year did the Mashpee Wampanoag win federal recognition as a tribe?

The Bureau of Indian Affairs granted the Mashpee Wampanoag federal recognition in 2007, three decades after the tribal council formed in 1974 and petitioned in 1975 and again in 1990.

Which president kept a summer home at Gray Gables in Bourne?

Grover Cleveland summered at Gray Gables on Buzzards Bay in Bourne through the 1890s, fishing the local waters and using the house as his second-term summer White House.

Which writer's Cape Cod stories in The Saturday Evening Post helped promote the peninsula as a summer haven?

Joseph C. Lincoln, born in Brewster in 1870, filled The Saturday Evening Post and dozens of novels with genial Cape Cod sea captains, drawing Bostonians newly reachable by rail.

Which airport, renamed in 2020, is Cape Cod's largest with scheduled airline service?

Cape Cod Gateway Airport in Hyannis took its new name in 2020, dropping Barnstable Municipal Airport; hometown carrier Cape Air flies from it year-round.

Mashpee High School hosts a rare high-school chapter of which professional body?

Mashpee High School's television-production program chartered a student chapter of SMPTE, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, the society's only chapter at a high school when it formed.