Cape Cod : $b its natural and cultural history : a guide to Cape Cod National Seashore, MassachusettsUnited States. National Park Service. Division of Publications
History
Cape Cod : $b its natural and cultural history : a guide to Cape Cod National Seashore, Massachusetts
United States. National Park Service. Division of Publications
Cape Cod National Seashore (Mass.) -- Guidebooks
At least one native industry survived, in fact flourished, during
these years of decline and transformation. Cranberries had been
commercially raised on the Cape’s bogs since the early 1800s, but
the coming of the railroad opened off-Cape markets for the crop. The
cranberry, as much as the cod, became the symbol of Cape Cod. In
recent years, because of the success of modern marketing, many small
bogs that were abandoned over the last half century have been put
back into cultivation. One of these old bogs, established by James
Howe in the 1880s on North Pamet Road in Truro, has been partially
restored by the National Park Service.
The third and unquestionably the most sweeping transformation of
the Cape’s culture and landscape has occurred since World War II.
With the building of the Mid-Cape Highway and the expansion of
the post-war economy, the first waves of modern “washashores,” or
permanent immigrants, began to arrive over the Bourne and Sagamore
bridges. From 1940 to 1990 the Cape’s year-round population increased
from about 30,000 to more than 175,000, with a summertime population
that swells to 500,000 or more. Each year from 1970 to 1990 an
average of 5,000 acres (roughly the size of Provincetown) was
developed for residential and commercial uses.
[Illustration: (Commercial Street in Provincetown.)]
Though the Cape has been technically an island since 1914, it
continues to be increasingly a part of the mainland. The old,
indigenous, rural maritime culture of the Cape is irretrievably gone,
though small fishing fleets continue to go out of local harbors and
inlets. Cape Codders now live in a cosmopolitan contemporary culture,
sharing more with their urban counterparts than with the sea captains
in whose 200-year-old houses they may dwell or spend the night.
With this staggering growth and its resultant pressures on the Cape’s
resources and natural habitats, there has been an increasing movement
to protect the Cape’s fragile landscape and its wildlife. The most
dramatic and sweeping manifestation of this was the Congressional
authorization of the Cape Cod National Seashore itself in 1961, but
a number of homegrown environmental research, conservation, and
educational organizations have also been established. These groups
include the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, the Wellfleet
Bay Audubon Sanctuary, the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History in
Brewster, the Association for the Preservation of Cape Cod, and the
Compact of Cape Cod Conservation Trusts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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