Cape Cod
Cape Cod is a peninsula extending into the Atlantic Ocean from the southeastern corner of Massachusetts, in the northeastern United States. Its historic, maritime character and ample beaches attract heavy tourism during the summer months. The name Cape Cod, coined in 1602 by Bartholomew Gosnold, is the ninth-oldest English place-name in the U.S.
As defined by the Cape Cod Commission's enabling legislation, Cape Cod is coextensive with Barnstable County, Massachusetts. It extends from Provincetown in the northeast to Woods Hole in the southwest, and is bordered by Plymouth to the northwest. The Cape is divided into fifteen towns, several of which are in turn made up of multiple named villages. Cape Cod forms the southern boundary of the Gulf of Maine, which extends north-eastward to Nova Scotia.
Since 1914, most of Cape Cod has been separated from the mainland by the Cape Cod Canal. The canal cuts roughly across the base of the peninsula, though small portions of the Cape Cod towns of Bourne and Sandwich lie on the mainland side of the canal. Two highway bridges cross the Cape Cod Canal: the Sagamore Bridge and the Bourne Bridge. In addition, the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge carries railway freight and provides limited passenger service onto the Cape.
Region of Cape Cod and the Islands
Like Cape Cod itself, the islands south of the Cape have evolved from whaling and trading areas to become resort destinations, attracting wealthy families, celebrities, and tourists. These include the large nearby islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard.Both islands are also famous summer tourist destinations, commonly accessed by ferry from several locations on the Cape. The phrases Cape Cod and the Islands and the Cape and Islands are often used to describe the whole region of Barnstable County, Dukes County, and Nantucket County.
Several small islands right off Cape Cod, including Monomoy Island, Monomoscoy Island, Popponesset Island, and Seconsett Island, are also in Barnstable County.
The Forbes family-owned Naushon Island was first purchased by John Murray Forbes. Naushon is one of the Elizabeth Islands, many of which are privately owned. One of the publicly accessible Elizabeths is the southernmost island in the chain, Cuttyhunk Island, with a year-round population of 52 people. Several prominent families have established compounds or estates on the larger islands, making these islands some of the wealthiest resorts in the Northeast, yet they retain much of the early merchant trading and whaling culture.
Cape Cod in particular is a popular retirement area; 31.8% of the population of Barnstable County is 65 years old or older., and the average age of residents is the highest of any area in New England. Cape Cod is majority Democrat, but by a smaller margin than the rest of Massachusetts.
The bulk of the land in the area is glacial terminal moraine and represents the southernmost extent of glacial coverage in southeast New England; similar glacial formations make up Long Island in New York and Block Island in Rhode Island.
Geography and political divisions
Physical geography and boundaries
The name "Cape Cod", as it was first used in 1602, applied only to the very tip of the peninsula. It remained that way for 125 years until the "Precinct of Cape Cod" was incorporated as the Town of Provincetown. No longer in "official" use over the ensuing decades, the name came to mean all of the land east of the Manomet and Scusset rivers – essentially along the line that became the Cape Cod Canal. The creation of the canal separated the majority of the peninsula from the mainland. Many state and federal agencies, including the Cape Cod Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, treat the Cape as an island with regard to disaster preparedness, groundwater management, and other infrastructure factors. Cape Codders tend to refer to the land on the mainland side of the canal as "off-Cape", though the legal delineation of Cape Cod, coincident to the boundaries of Barnstable County, includes portions of the towns of Bourne and Sandwich that are located north of the canal.Cape Cod Bay lies in between Cape Cod and the mainland – bounded on the north by a line between Provincetown and Marshfield. North of Cape Cod Bay is Massachusetts Bay, which contains the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, located north of Provincetown. Cape Cod Bay and Massachusetts Bay are both part of the Gulf of Maine, which includes the waters between the Cape and Nova Scotia. The Atlantic Ocean is to the east of Cape Cod, and to the southwest of the Cape is Buzzards Bay. The Cape Cod Canal, completed in 1916, connects Buzzards Bay to Cape Cod Bay; its creation shortened the trade route between New York and Boston by.
Cape Cod extends into the Atlantic Ocean, with a breadth of between, and covers more than of shoreline. Its elevation ranges from at its highest point, at the top of Pine Hill, in the Bourne portion of Joint Base Cape Cod, down to sea level.
Cape Cod and the Islands form part of a continuous archipelagic region consisting of a chain of islands running from Long Island to the tip of the Cape. This region is historically and collectively known by naturalists as the Outer Lands.
Towns and villages
Cape Cod incorporates all of Barnstable County, which comprises 15 towns: Bourne, Sandwich, Falmouth, Mashpee, Barnstable, Yarmouth, Harwich, Dennis, Brewster, Chatham, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown. Each of these towns includes a number of villages; see Barnstable County for a complete list.Barnstable, the most populated municipality on Cape Cod, is the only one to have adopted a city form of government, whose legislative body is an elected 13-member council. However, like other smaller Massachusetts cities, Barnstable retained its "Town of Barnstable" moniker. All of the other towns elect a 5-member Board of Selectmen as the executive policy-setting board and utilize Town Meetings as their legislative body.
Cape Cod and the Islands
To the south of Cape Cod lie Nantucket Sound; Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, both large islands; and the mostly privately owned Elizabeth Islands.Sections
For most of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, Cape Cod was considered to consist of three sections :- The Upper Cape is the part of Cape Cod closest to the mainland, comprising the towns of Bourne, Sandwich, Falmouth, and Mashpee. Falmouth is the home of the famous Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Marine Biological Laboratory as well as several other research organizations, and is also the most-used ferry connection to Martha's Vineyard. Falmouth is composed of several separate villages, including East Falmouth, Falmouth Village, Hatchville, North Falmouth, Teaticket, Waquoit, West Falmouth, and Woods Hole, as well as several smaller hamlets that are incorporated into their larger neighbors. Bourne is home to the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, in the village of Buzzards Bay, along the canal, Joint Base Cape Cod, Aptucxet Trading Post, the annual Bourne Scallop Festival in September, and, until 1884, was part of Sandwich. Sandwich, the oldest town on Cape Cod, founded in 1637, is home to the Dexter Grist Mill, the historic Hoxie House, Heritage Museums and Gardens, and the Sandwich Glass Museum. Mashpee is the home of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe of Native Americans.
- The Mid-Cape area includes the towns of Barnstable, Yarmouth and Dennis. The area features many beaches, including warm-water beaches along Nantucket Sound, e.g., Kalmus Beach in Hyannis, which gets its name from one of the inventors of Technicolor, Herbert Kalmus. This popular windsurfing destination was bequeathed to the town of Barnstable by Dr. Kalmus on condition that it not be developed, possibly one of the first instances of open-space preservation in the US. The Mid-Cape is also the commercial and industrial center of the region. There are seven villages in Barnstable, including Barnstable Village, Centerville, Cotuit, Hyannis, Marstons Mills, Osterville, and West Barnstable, as well as several smaller hamlets that are incorporated into their larger neighbors. The villages of Yarmouth are South Yarmouth, West Yarmouth and Yarmouth Port. There are five villages in Dennis, including North Dennis, East Dennis, West Dennis, Dennis Port, and South Dennis.
- The Lower Cape & Outer Cape traditionally includes all of the rest of the Cape, or the towns of Harwich, Brewster, Chatham, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown. In the present day, the four outermost towns are more commonly and collectively known as the Lower Cape. This area is home to the Cape Cod National Seashore, a national park that encompasses much of the Lower Cape, including the entire east-facing coast from Orleans to Provincetown. The Lower Cape is home to popular beaches such as Nauset Light Beach and Coast Guard Beach in Eastham, Race Point Beach in Provincetown, Ballston Beach in Truro, and Skaket Beach in Orleans. This area is less populated than the rest of Cape Cod, though Provincetown can have a crowded, city-like atmosphere during the summer season. Provincetown has become a major gay & lesbian resort destination - the town is regarded as one of the largest LGBT resort communities in the United States. Provincetown is also renowned for its historic fishing fleets and Stellwagen Bank, a popular fishing ground and whale watching destination, is located a few miles north of Race Point.
Geology
Most of Cape Cod's geological history involves the advance and retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet in the late Pleistocene geological era and the subsequent changes in sea level. Using radiocarbon dating techniques, researchers have determined that around 23,000 years ago, the ice sheet reached its maximum southward advance over North America, and then started to retreat. Many kettle ponds – clear, cold lakes – were formed and remain on Cape Cod as a result of the receding glacier. By about 18,000 years ago, the ice sheet had retreated past Cape Cod. By roughly 15,000 years ago, it had retreated past southern New England. With so much of Earth's water locked up in massive ice sheets, the sea level was lower. Truro's bayside beaches used to be a petrified forest before it became a beach.
File:Deposition erosion.jpg|thumb|Coastal erosion by wave action brings growth elsewhere by deposition of transported sediment.
As the ice began to melt, the sea began to rise. Initially, sea level rose quickly, about per 1,000 years, but then the rate declined. On Cape Cod, sea level rose roughly per millennium between 6,000 and 2,000 years ago. After that, it continued to rise at about per millennium. By 6,000 years ago, the sea level was high enough to start eroding the glacial deposits that the vanished continental ice sheet had left on Cape Cod. The water transported the eroded deposits north and south along the outer Cape's shoreline through a process known as longshore drift. Those reworked sediments that moved north went to the tip of Cape Cod. The entire town of Provincetown, at the extreme tip of the Cape, is a spit consisting largely of deposited marine sediment that was eroded and transported from farther south along the shore. Those sediments that instead moved south created the islands and shoals of Monomoy. So while other parts of the Cape have dwindled from the action of the waves, these parts of the Cape have grown through the deposition of sediment in just the last 6,000 years.
This process continues today. Due to their exposure to the open ocean, the Cape and islands are subject to considerable coastal erosion. Due to erosion, the Cape will be completely submerged by the sea within several thousand years. This erosion causes the washout of beaches and the destruction of the barrier islands; for example, the ocean broke through the barrier island at Chatham during Hurricane Bob in 1991, allowing waves and storm surge to hit the coast with no obstruction. Consequently, the sediment and sand from the beaches are being washed away and deposited elsewhere. While this destroys land in some places, it creates land elsewhere, most noticeably in marshes where sediment is deposited by flowing water.
Cape Cod's aquifer consists of six hydrologically independent lenses from which all the towns on the Cape obtain drinking water. Contamination with industrial chemicals and pharmaceutical drugs from septic systems is a concern. In 2023, the state began a nitrogen pollution regulation scheme for Cape Cod and the Islands to address overgrowth of algae, cyanobacteria, and plants.