Cape Cod

CAPE COD Cape Cod, an internationally renowned vacation destination in Massachusetts, is a sixty-five-mile peninsula of almost two dozen small towns accessed from the mainland by the Bourne or Sagamore Bridge over the Cape Cod Canal to U.S. Highway 6A, also known as the Old King’s Highway. Renowned in the American imagination for the early colonial settlement of Puritan Pilgrims and the origins of Thanksgiving, its landscape is tied to maritime folklife and the occupational folklife of cranberry growing. Although known for its British American heritage in old town names, the region also has significant Cape Verdean, Portuguese, and African American communities. It is also known for its Yankee English dialect, with its broad “a,” and local legends of shipwrecks and haunted ocean-swept sites. Among the large deaf island population of Martha’s Vineyard, stories are told with signs

unique to the community. It is a folk region where visitors expect a glimpse of old America at its founding, and residents have a sense of their community heritage tied to the sea and sand. Although known generally as the “Cape,” Cape Codders usually have their own cognitive map of the region divided into the inner shore, or “Bay Side,” and the outer shore, or “Back Side,” facing Nantucket Sound.