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Cape Cod National Seashore: A Proposal

A GREAT PENINSULA, shaped like a bold bent arm, thrusts some seventy miles into the Atlantic Ocean from the Massachusetts mainland. This is Cape Cod, landmark and haven for mariners who sought a new world or wrested their living from a perilous sea. Here vacationists now seek refreshment along sweeping shores and quiet coves. Heaped up by glaciers long ago; then molded by winds and waves and currents, Cape Cod has been endowed with plant and animal life in rich variety. Now it is a scene of everchanging charm, beautiful to behold, fascinating to study. Surf pounds the eastern headland. Calmer waters of Cape Cod Bay and Nantucket Sound wash the Cape's northern and southern shores. Between, the winds brush heath and marsh and woodland, ruffling ponds the glaciers left behind. On the ocean side of the Cape's forearm lies Great Beach, a magnificent ocean shore. For three centuries, this extraordinary shoreline was spared the great industrial buildup of our eastern coast. Before the automobile age, Cape Cod was "off the beaten path." The modern highway has changed that. Now it is within a day's travel of nearly one-third of our Nation's population—less than 300 highway miles from all six New England capitals and New York City; an hour and a half by air from Washington, D. C. And as transportation improvements continue to cut time and distance, the Cape is ever closer to all America. The inexorable march of progress brings many and varied benefits for which we can be deeply thankful. But inevitably the march imperils other values, old and often deeply loved. This surging tide of modern progress has rolled over vast areas of our pristine coastal country, wiping out, one after another, the natural open spaces long cherished as an American birthright. Houses, businesses, resorts of all kinds continue ever more rapidly to disrupt and destroy the very beauties we seek most to enjoy. This is happening to Cape Cod. Even now the still-unspoiled Great Beach is vanishing under buildings. It is time to set aside, preserve, and protect the last of the "old" Cape so that the inspiration of its surpassing beauty can be kept intact and handed down to future generations of Americans. Until now, that beauty has been protected by the good taste and care of individuals, the Towns, and the Commonwealth. Their efforts, however, may soon be engulfed by the wave of development that threatens. National protection will be needed to achieve the conservation ideals of the people who love Cape Cod.

U.S. National Park Service

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Natural resources management, ()
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Cape Cod National Seashore, Code: CACO
Park History Division, Code: PHD

Cape Cod National Seashore, Barnstable County, Massachusetts
Latitude: 41.959098815918, Longitude: -70.0053024291992

Legacy NPS Focus Record ID : 449959

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/caco/proposal/sec1.htm

01/01/1959

NPS History E-Library || html

Cape Cod National Seashore

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U.S. National Park Service

Kelly Spradley-Kurowski

Friday, July 8, 2011 1:33:25 PM

Wednesday, August 9, 2017 7:35:29 PM

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Source: Legacy Focus Resource Type
Content: Management report