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This Cape Cod trivia quiz has 46 free questions with answers and runs the whole 65 miles from the Bourne and Sagamore bridges to Race Point. It covers the Pilgrims' first landfall and the Mayflower Compact in Provincetown Harbor, Bartholomew Gosnold naming the Cape in 1602, the canal that turned it into an island, and the National Seashore that John F. Kennedy signed into being from his summer White House in Hyannis Port. There are questions on the 15 towns and their claims to fame, the lighthouses that had to be moved back from the eroding bluffs, Marconi's wireless station, Woods Hole and the discovery of the Titanic, Edward Hopper's Truro, Wellfleet oysters, Cape Cod potato chips, the Falmouth Road Race and the wooden-bat baseball league that has sent more than a thousand players to the majors. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reliable source. Perfect for a rainy day at the rental.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Cape Cod forms the southern boundary of which body of water that stretches northeast to Nova Scotia?
Gulf of Maine
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.
Q 02Which English explorer coined the name Cape Cod in 1602?
Bartholomew Gosnold
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.
Q 03Cape Cod is legally coextensive with which Massachusetts county?
Barnstable
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.
Q 04How many towns make up Cape Cod?
15
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.
Q 05Since 1914, what has separated most of the peninsula from the mainland?
A man-made canal
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.
Q 06Which two highway bridges carry traffic across the Cape Cod Canal?
Sagamore and Bourne
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.
Q 07Which financier directed construction of the working canal that began in 1909?
August Belmont Jr.
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.
Q 08Where did the Pilgrims make their first landing on November 11, 1620, before moving on to Plymouth?
Near Provincetown
They had sighted the Cape two days earlier. The Mayflower Compact was drawn up and signed while the ship lay in Provincetown Harbor.
Q 09The Pilgrim Monument at the tip of the Cape holds what architectural distinction?
Tallest all-granite structure in the United States
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.
Q 10Which Italian tower served as the model for the Pilgrim Monument?
Torre del Mangia in Siena
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.
Q 11Which president created the Cape Cod National Seashore in 1961?
John F. Kennedy
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.
Q 12In which Cape Cod village is the Kennedy Compound, JFK's 'summer White House'?
Hyannis Port
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.
Q 13From which Cape Cod town did Marconi make the first US transatlantic wireless transmission?
Wellfleet
Q 21In what year was the Cape Cod Baseball League formally organized with four teams?
1923
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.
Q 22How long is the Falmouth Road Race, run on Cape Cod on the third Sunday of August?
7 miles
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.
Q 23Which singer's 1957 record 'Old Cape Cod' became the peninsula's unofficial anthem?
Patti Page
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.
Theodore Roosevelt used the equipment for the 1903 message to King Edward VII. The beach below the bluffs is now called Marconi Beach.
Q 14Which is the oldest and tallest lighthouse on Cape Cod?
Highland Light
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.
Q 15Why were two of Cape Cod's lighthouses, including Nauset Light, moved inland in 1996?
Coastal erosion threatened to topple them
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.
Q 16Which Cape Cod town, founded in 1637, is the oldest on the Cape?
Sandwich
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.
Q 17Which Cape Cod town is home to a federally recognized Wampanoag tribe?
Mashpee
The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe has its headquarters in Mashpee, a town that began in 1660 as a 'praying town' reserved for Wampanoag converts.
Q 18Which famous ocean-research organization, founded in 1930, is based in a village of Falmouth on Cape Cod?
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, founded in 1930, is the largest independent oceanographic research institution in the US and operates the deep-diving submersible Alvin.
Q 19Robert Ballard of Cape Cod's famous ocean-research institution co-led the 1985 expedition that found which famous wreck?
RMS Titanic
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.
Q 20What kind of bats does the Cape Cod Baseball League use?
Wooden
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.
Q 24Which naturalist wrote the book Cape Cod, based on visits from 1849 and published posthumously in 1865?
Henry David Thoreau
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.
Q 25Which American painter owned a summer house in Truro and painted Corn Hill and Cottages at North Truro?
Edward Hopper
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.
Q 26Kalmus Beach on the Mid-Cape is named after Herbert Kalmus, an inventor of what?
Technicolor
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.
Q 27Which town at the 'elbow' of the Cape has become known as a hub of great white shark activity?
Chatham
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.
Q 28Which Cape Cod town contains First Encounter Beach, site of a 1620 Pilgrim-Wampanoag skirmish?
Eastham
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.
Q 29Cape Cod Potato Chips, founded in 1980, is headquartered in which village?
Hyannis
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.
Q 30Which Yale president coined the term 'Cape Cod house' after a visit in 1800?
Timothy Dwight IV
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.