Coastal Massachusetts had plenty of history before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620. Native Americans long lived there. Even other Europeans explored the area. Nonetheless it was the Pilgrims we all remembered from our elementary school curriculum and a lifetime of Thanksgiving holidays. So that’s where I began.
I’d been wanting to go there for many years. It had been an empty hole in my personal experience of a particularly important era of American history.
Pilgrim Monument
Lesser known in the tale of the Pilgrims was that their initial footsteps in the new world didn’t happen at Plymouth. Initially they disembarked at the tip of Cape Cod in the vicinity of modern-day Provincetown. The wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact — the governing document for the Plymouth Colony — while sitting aboard the Mayflower as it sat in Cape Cod’s natural harbor.
Then the Pilgrims explored the Cape for several weeks seeking a suitable place to establish their colony. The land, they discovered, would be too difficult to farm. Also it lacked suitable fresh water. Only then did the Pilgrims press onward towards Plymouth.
Provincetown residents commemorated this initial landfall in the early 20th Century by constructing a large granite tower (map) called the Pilgrim Monument. Visitors can climb 252 feet (77 metres) to the top where it features an open-air room with amazing views of the cape and the town below. The whole experience really impressed me. I’m sure the picture-perfect weather and lack of additional visitors helped too.
Plymouth Rock
Naturally I stopped by Plymouth too. That was a given. Once again I was thrilled to have arrived in mid-May with wonderful weather and the bulk of the tourists not arriving for another couple of weeks. Then we could visit all of the historical sites without feeling jostled or claustrophobic.
Well, let’s talk about the rock (map). Plymouth Rock, as the story goes, supposedly became the first place where the Pilgrims set foot when they arrived at their new home. Of course, let’s all pretend the Cape Cod landing never happened either.
I’d seen images of Plymouth Rock before so, with expectations suitably managed, the site didn’t completely underwhelm me. However, it was amusing to watch the faces of other visitors who gazed upon the famous stone for the first time. Plymouth Rock resides within a grandiose edifice resembling an ancient Greek temple complete with marble columns. People walked up expecting something spectacular… and… they see a rock with 1620 stamped upon it. Seriously. It looked like someone dug it out of their back yard.
Historically, it might just be a simple rock without any greater significance too. Thomas Faunce identified Plymouth Rock in 1741 at the age of 94. There was nobody else alive who could corroborate his claim. He wasn’t a Mayflower passenger either although there were still a few Mayflower passengers living when he was a child. In theory it’s possible that the Pilgrims first set foot on Plymouth Rock, just not likely. However, more important than the rock was what it represented and that alone made it a worthwhile stop. Anyway, that’s how I rationalized it.
Marconi Wireless Station
I moved onto other interests once I satisfied my Pilgrim curiosity. An historical site of much more recent vintage awaited exploration about half-way up the cape (map). Little remained of the old Marconi Wireless Station other than a few bricks and crumbling cement. The government dismantled most of the site and the sea eroded the rest of it long ago.
Here, Guglielmo Marconi built a series of towers while pioneering ship-to-shore and transatlantic radio communications. The facility on Cape Cod was called the South Wellfleet Wireless station. From this spot, the first direct wireless radio message between the United States and the United Kingdom took place in 1903.
Whaling
Much of Nantucket’s history focused on whaling. Whaling fleets existed in various coastal communities in New England, and Nantucket had one of the most successful operations. It also provided a name for the “Nantucket Sleigh Ride” — a harpooned whale would drag the small dory boats used by hunters on a dangerous, wild ride. Eventually the exhausted whale would stop and only then could the whalers close in for the kill. The whaling industry made a lot of people quite wealthy for a time and many of their stately homes lined the cobblestone streets of Nantucket.
I particularly liked this photograph I took in Nantucket Harbor (map) during an early morning fog. Minus a couple of modern boats, it almost looked like it could have stepped out of an earlier century when whaling still ruled the local economy.
Gingerbread Cottages
I wrote about Methodist summer revival camp meetings last year in From Camp to Town. That brought the “gingerbread cottages” of Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard to my attention. I won’t bother to repeat the story because it’s all covered in the previous article. However, I’ll say that it was lovely to stroll amongst the 300+ historic buildings (map) as well as visiting a place in person that I’d discovered while writing Twelve Mile Circle.
Leave a Reply