Cape Cod Superlatives, Firsts and Bests

First landing of the Pilgrims in the New World on November 11, 1620 (the Pilgrims stayed five weeks in Provincetown before sailing across Cape Cod Bay to Plymouth);

The first visitors to the site of Provincetown’s Red Inn were the Pilgrims from the Mayflower. On November 11, 1620, Captain William Bradford set foot in the New “free” World on the beach directly in front of this Inn. The next day, Monday, the Pilgrims did their laundry and an American tradition began;

Land of Lighthouses—more lighthouses than any other county in America;

Provincetown’s Pilgrim Monument, at 252-feet, is the tallest all-granite structure in America;

Coast Guard Beach in Eastham is regularly named to Conde Nast Traveler’s ‘Top Ten Beaches in the US;’

Cape Playhouse in Dennis is America’s oldest professional theatre, having starred such luminaries as Jessica Tandy, Bette Davis (an usherette), Gregory Peck and Basil Rathbone;

US Route 6, the nation’s longest coast to coast highway, starts in Provincetown, and runs 3,517 miles and terminates at Long Beach, CA. (Californians would undoubtedly say that it “starts in Long Beach and “terminates” in Provincetown; however, since Provincetown is arguably the nation’s ‘oldest’ town, it claims sovereignty on this claim.)

Cape Cod Potato Chips—some say the world’s BEST. Each chip is hand-cooked and -inspected before packaging and shipping to stores all over the globe;

Jonathan Swift once observed, “It was a bold man that first ate an oyster.” Yet the concept of eating raw seafood has existed among primitives forever. One wonders how our ancestors discerned the briny, delicious delight that lies inside tightly closed oyster shells. Seafood lovers gratefully pay homage to that brave soul who “first ate an oyster” every time they down a couple of dozen on the half shell. Wellfleet fishermen produce and harvest oysters famous throughout the world. The taste is unique because of the water flow, and an abundance of nutrients, minerals, and fresh water intrusion. Oysters are at their plumpest and sweetest in months with an “r” in it. They spawn in the months without an R, May through August, and reach their flavorful height by late October. Wellfleet Oysters are prized by chefs the world over for their delicacy and sweetness. Millionaire railroad tycoon ‘Diamond Jim’ Brady would often just have to have these for a mid-morning snack—and no other oysters would do. The town incorporated into the Town of Wellfleet in 1763 and is claimed to be the namesake of the Wellfleet (or Wallfleet), England, another town renowned for its oysters (oysters still are an important commodity to this Cape town). The town has been famous for Wellfleet Oysters ever since these tickled Champlain’s Gallic taste buds in 1606 (Champlain christened Wellfleet Port aux Huitres—literally “port of the oysters”). Wellfleetians and gourmands happily agree that these choice shellfish are the most fragrant and sweetest of all oysters. There is a Wellfleet Oyster Weekend in October each year. Activities include an oyster shucking contest, raw bar, live auction, live music, road races, arts and crafts and more.

En route to the center of Wellfleet, the First Congregational Church, a handsome 1850 Greek Revival affair—replete with a stained glass window depicting a clipper ship—is the only town clock which rings ship’s time (one, five and nine o’clock are two bells; two, six and ten o’clock are four bells; three, seven and eleven o’clock are six bells; and four, eight and twelve o’clock are eight bells. Half hours are struck by adding one stroke to the corresponding even hours). Ripley’s Believe It or Not has listed Wellfleet’s town clock’s method of ringing time, as have many newspapers and magazines.

Originally, Cape Cod was united with the mainland until the US Army Corps of Engineers—realizing a three-century-old dream—dug the 17½-mile long, 480-foot wide Cape Cod Canal from 1909 to 1914 giving ‘birth’ to Cape Cod as an independent land mass and joining Buzzards and Cape Cod Bays. The Cape Cod Canal the world’s widest sea-level canal.

The Old King's Highway Regional Historic District is the largest historic district in the nation in mileage, encompassing areas north of Route 6 in Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth, Dennis, Brewster and parts of Orleans. Route 6A, the Old King’s Highway, at 39 miles long, is the longest contiguous historic district in America and contains four centuries of architecture. Along a two-mile stretch of Route 6A in Yarmouth Port, there exists an eclectic array of structures housing private residences, B&Bs, antiques shops, restaurants and galleries, not one of which was built in the 20th or 21st century.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole (a village of Falmouth), a private, non-profit research and education organization established in 1930 is the largest independent oceanographic laboratory in the world.

Heritage Museums & Gardens of Sandwich owns and exhibits the most important collection of American antique automobiles in the United States.

To its credit, cultivation of cranberries in bogs originated in Dennis on Cape Cod. In 1815, retired Dennis sea captain Henry Hall observed that wild cranberries seemed to flourish in areas where the sand blew over them. He is widely considered to be the first individual replicating such conditions as a preferred way to cultivate the tart berries. Once a whaling port, Harwich went on to pioneer the cranberry industry in 1846 and it was in this small town that the first commercial cranberry bogs in the nation were established. Harwich is still a leading grower of cranberries because of its ideal soil conditions and extended growing season. The cranberry is now Massachusetts’ leading agricultural product.

Cape Cinema, the 92-seat theater on the grounds of the Cape Playhouse, with its 6,400 square-foot Art Deco ceiling mural of Prometheus opened July 1, 1930, world-premiering The Wizard of Oz. Its mural is the largest in North America!

Most people are unaware that local Harwich boy Caleb Chase co-founded Chase & Sanborn coffee in 1878. This fact became more widely known in 1993 when local volunteer historian Patricia Ellis Buck realized—and widely publicized—the fact that the founders’ likenesses (i.e., Messrs. Chase’s and Sanborn’s) had been switched on the coffee package labels. While no one is quite certain how long this slight had been endured, it was promptly corrected.

Provincetown, the Cape’s most colorful and fascinating town, is an artist colony (America’s oldest continuous such colony), fishing town and resort—complete unto itself—self-contained and self-sufficient. Artists have been coming to P’town since 1899 when artist Charles W. Hawthorne founded the Cape Cod School of Art here, introducing the near-derelict fishing town to Greenwich Village intelligentsia. He was so besotted by its “jumble of color in the intense sunlight” that he ended up teaching here for 30 years. His famous painting Fish Cleaners graces town hall. He also helped found the Provincetown Art Association & Museum. Other artists drawn to town include such luminaries as Edward Hopper, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell and Mark Rothko. Eugene O’Neill’s first plays were written and produced here (his work, Bound for East Cardiff, was staged in the tumble-down Wharf Theater in 1916, and actually launched his career) and the Fine Arts Work Center continues to have among its ranks some of the most important contemporary literati. Even screen stars are no strangers here, and Marlon Brando, Richard Gere and Al Pacino, among others, have all performed here.

The Mayflower Compact, the first written ‘constitution’ written and ratified in the New World, an agreement whereby a free people would self-govern, was drafted in Cape Cod Bay. It is from this historic document, signed during the Pilgrims five-week stay in Provincetown, that the fullness of America’s liberties would eventually emerge.

The square-bottomed brown paper bag was first created in Dennis, Cape Cod, by Luther Child Crowell and patented by him in 1867. It is still in use, along with the plastic bags, in groceries stores and supermarkets today. Five years later, in 1872, he invented a machine to manufacture his paper bags