A Message from the President |
Welcome to summer on Cape Cod!
And in that spirit, I am pleased to announce that the Evenings at Salt Pond series is back (see “Upcoming Events” and “Park News” in this newsletter), sponsored by the Friends.
I will be brief because there is plenty of fascinating content in this E-News edition, including an article about the Peaked Hill Trust, the park partner that maintains and manages the dune shacks in Provincetown, as well as an article by Park Historian Bill Burke about the stone markers and grave stones that have been rediscovered on park property.
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So, I wish you and your family a joyous summer season here in the beautiful Cape Cod National Seashore, and please stay safe!
Peter Eisenbarth
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2021 Annual Meeting
Given the uncertainty of safely gathering together as a membership at planning time, we are opting to once again conduct the business of our annual meeting via email.
Treasurer Donna Cary has prepared our annual treasurer's report for 2020 which you will find here after July 20. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the link to access it.
Our proposed slate of officers and directors is as follows for 2021-2022.
President (and Second Term Director) – Peter Eisenbarth
(may serve as President through 7/2023, second term as director will end 7/2024)
First Vice President – Betsy Bray (first term as director ends 7/2022)
Second Vice President – Warren Mumford (second term as director ends 7/2023)
Clerk - Jane Fischer (second term as director ends 7/2022)
Treasurer - Tim Famulare (first term as director will end 7/2024)
First Term Directors:
Agnes Mittermeyr (first term ends 7/2024)
Dave Crocker (first term ends 7/2024)
Members, please click here to send us an email to accept this slate of officers by July 20 with the subject line: "Yes I accept the proposed FCCNS slate of officers."
As this summer of 2021 unfolds we wish you, our valued members and your families, a safe and enjoyable summer season.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
Link to our Activities web page for descriptions of our sponsored programs taking place Tuesday evenings, at 7 PM, at the
Salt Pond Visitor Center
50 Nauset Road,
Eastham
June 29
Concert: Jay Psaros
July 8
Concert: Toast & Jam
July 13
Saddle Up!
Family Circus Show
(rain date July 15)
July 20
Wampanoag Ways
Family Program with
Kitty Hendricks
July 27
Concert: Big Jazz
FRIDAY JULY 30
BONUS CONCERT:
Jason Spooner Band
August 3
Concert: Sarah Swain & the Oh Boys
August 10
Concert: Jason Spooner
August 17
Concert: Zoe Lewis & the Souvenirs (family program)
August 24
Concert: Crabgrass
August 31
Nature & Music:
a Beautiful Marriage with
Jung-Ho Pak &
Amber Broderick
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BECOME A MEMBER
If you are receiving e-News but are not yet a Friends member, we encourage you to become a Friend.
When renewing, consider upgrading your level of membership with our thanks.
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DONATE TODAY
Your contributions mean more than ever. Give a gift in memory of or in honor of a special person in your life.
Link here to
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When shopping at Amazon, use the Amazon "Smile" program and select Friends of the Cape Cod National Seashore as your charity.
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Gratitude
Friends has recently received generous donations from the Estate of Katherine S. Winter and the Fidelity Charitable Donor-Advised Fund, at the recommendation of the Barnard Fund. We deeply appreciate these significant gifts which enable us to further our mission to help preserve, protect, and enhance the fragile environment and unique cultural heritage of Cape Cod National Seashore.
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Park Partner: Peaked Hill Trust
by Bette Warner
Executive Director, Peaked Hill Trust
The Peaked Hill Trust (PHT) is a non-profit organization, incorporated in 1986, with the mission of protecting, maintaining, and preserving for use, the dune shacks of the Cape Cod National Seashore. At the time of its founding, the shacks were slated for demolition.
Through community outreach and the passionate efforts of long-time traditional shack users and dedicated citizens, the 1900-acre dune community is now listed as an historic district in the National Register of Historic Places and is protected by the Cape Cod National Seashore.
Central to PHT’s mission, is providing time and space within the dune colony to artists and creative visionaries, as well as the community-at-large, predicated on the belief that low-impact living in the unique beauty and solitude of the Outer Banks of Cape Cod is of intrinsic value to all people.
The Peaked Hill Trust manages five dune shacks: Euphoria, Thalassa, Zara, Margo-Gelb/Boris and Ray Wells. These shacks are maintained by dedicated and skilled volunteers and are available by lottery to its membership and through residencies in the arts and sciences on a weekly basis May through October. Volunteer caretakers serve as resident hosts providing transportation to and from the shacks and a “dune life” orientation preserving cultural traditions associated with primitive living in the dunes.
PHT manages two residency programs. The Outer Cape Artists in Residence Consortium (OCARC) was founded in 1995 in response to a request by the Cape Cod National Seashore to establish a residency program in the Margo-Gelb/Boris shack. OCARC is a consortium of four non-profit organizations - the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (FAWC), Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM), Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill and the Peaked Hill Trust (PHT) that manages the program. This art and writing fellowship consists of six two-week residencies juried by OCARC.
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PHT manages a second Arts and Science Residency. This program is both juried and managed by the Peaked Hill Trust and is designed to encourage a broad sweep of creative projects in the arts and sciences. Residencies consist of one or two-week stays in each of the five PHT managed shacks.
In the words of Henry Thoreau, we go to the dunes “to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if we can learn what it has to teach.”
Link here for more information on these residency programs and dune shacks.
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Culture Corner with Park Historian Bill Burke
Who Cares About Stone Markers and Monuments?
The wispy Cape Cod shoreline changes with every tide. Yet dozens of stubborn granite boundary posts, monuments and humble gravestones lurk in the forests and swamps of the National Seashore waiting to be rediscovered. They are noble survivors in a world of impermanence. They are a portal to the Cape’s past – its people, places, and events.
First there is the Nauset sharpening stone on Skiff Hill in Eastham. Generations of Nauset tribe gathered around the rock to sharpen stone points, blades, and bone fishhooks, leaving behind the abrasions and grooves you see today. Just south is a humbler granite post carved with the single letter “T”. Located along the Fort Hill Trail, it marks the northern boundary of Samuel Treat’s land in the 1600s. His remarkable tenure as minister to both white settlers and the native Nauset’s lasted 45 years.
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About a mile to the north, another prominent Eastham family placed the Doane Memorial. The Doane’s boldly transplanted from Plymouth beginning in the 1640s and the 2019 University of Michigan archeological field school investigations confirmed their presence. |
Wellfleet holds an abundance of more obscure stones, including one along the Old King’s Highway marking the Eastham/Wellfleet boundary at Indian Brook and others marking locations of long forgotten schoolhouses in places like Bound Brook Island. A small family cemetery plot on the edge of Bound Brook exists today – a family touched by the tragedy of smallpox. The highly visible memorial stone to Marconi sits proudly at the site of this fast-eroding wireless station. |
Truro boasts the Pilgrim Spring marker along the trail of the same name while impressive granite boundary stones in the former Province Lands State Reservation are tougher to find and tell the story of Provincetown’s remarkable legacy of public lands. Rounding it all out at the Cape’s tip is the somber collection of 14 simple numbered stones at the smallpox cemetery site.
So, go out and rediscover these remarkably rugged symbols of chapters in Cape history. You’ll need patience, a good map, and an abundant imagination.
all images courtesy of NPS
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Park News
National Seashore Completes Several Infrastructure Projects; Nauset Light Bathhouse Work Continues
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Many visitor facilities have been rehabilitated in advance of what is anticipated to be a busy summer season at the seashore. Restroom upgrades are complete at Salt Pond Visitor Center, Race Point Beach, Marconi Beach, and Coast Guard Beach. A new path from the Province Lands Visitor Center Parking Lot to the visitor center is finished, providing an accessible visitor experience. Other construction work will be underway over the next several months, including repairs to the two visitor centers, and rehabilitation work at Old Harbor Life-Saving Station. Septic system replacement at the Marconi area and septic system upgrades at Salt Pond will protect groundwater resources. |
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Construction of a new bathhouse at Nauset Light Beach has had setbacks due to construction material supply chain issues and COVID complications. Parking is severely curtailed by the construction zone. Visitors are asked to choose a different beach--Coast Guard is nearby and the Little Creek Parking Area rarely fills. Marconi Beach in Wellfleet has a large lot that rarely fills. Dropping off and parking along roadways is not permitted. |
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Seashore Operations are Emerging from COVID
Significant progress has been made in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Barnstable County's 14-day average COVID-19 Test Positivity Rate is below 1%. The Biden administration has lifted the 25% occupancy limit at federal buildings, and seashore staff are preparing to open visitor centers by late June. Trams from Little Creek to Coast Guard are now running at capacity, with masks required on trams because the service is considered a public transit system. Interpretive rangers are again offering a full suite of programs, including walks and talks, historic buildings open houses and grounds tours, beach campfires, kids' explorations, and paddle trips.
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The popular Evenings at Salt Pond series is back! Friends sponsors this series every year, and on Tuesday nights this summer at the Salt Pond amphitheater or auditorium the National Park Service and Friends will host Sarah Swain and the Oh Boys, Toast and Jam, Jason Spooner, Jay Psaros, Payomet's Cirque by the Sea: Saddle Up!, CrabGrass, Big Jazz, a family Wampanoag program with Kitty Hendricks-Mill, Zoe Lewis, and Jung-Ho Pak and Amber Broderick from Cape Symphony with a multi-media presentation (no live music) of musical masterpieces inspired by nature.
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Seal & Shark Research at the National Seashore
The reemergence of gray seals (Halichoerus grypus) and white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) on Cape Cod has led to collaborative research efforts among several research groups. On the federal side, the National Park Service and the US Geological Survey have joined the MA Division of Marine Fisheries, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and non-governmental organizations--the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy and the Center for Coastal Studies, on research questions and methods that will lead to better understanding of these creatures and inform future management practices. (A picture showing the bathymetric profile of the near-shore environment around the seal haul-out at near Head of the Meadow Beach. The image also shows the path of a white shark as it moves through this area.)
Current research efforts are not only studying the shark population, but also the near-shore habitat sharks are using. What is the near-shore environment like? How are sharks using this area to hunt or explore the coastline? The Atlantic White Shark Conservancy and the MA Division of Marine Fisheries are collaborating on research on shark population and movements by tagging sharks with satellite transmitters (https://www.atlanticwhiteshark.org/white-shark-research).
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The Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies is conducting a separate study looking at the fine-scale (small) movements of sharks in the near-shore environment. This project combines the Centers’ shallow water mapping technology and deploys the same detection buoys used by the Division of Marine Fisheries to detect tagged white sharks. The buoys are deployed in a fine array, allowing for meter-scale tracking to capture information on fine-scale movements of sharks in the near-shore area. (Image shows the location of some of the receivers deployed along the coast that are used to detect tagged white sharks. The image also shows the fine-scale array deployed off Head of the Meadow Beach. (Image courtesy of the Center for Coastal Studies).
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The Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies’ Shark and Seal Programs are also identifying the presence and behavior of seals by recording their behavior using an array of trail cameras and observations from shore. The presence of seals is an important component in understanding habitat use of white sharks in the seashore. (Picture from a wildlife camera deployed near Head of the Meadow Beach showing the seals hauled out on a sand bar.)
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Healthy Parks, Healthy People Run in September
Cape Cod Healthcare and Cape Cod National Seashore will once again sponsor a Heart Health Event to be held September 18 at Nauset Regional High School in Eastham. This collaboration between the National Park Service and Cape Cod Healthcare was created as part of the National Park Service Centennial.
Open to adults and children, run or walk a 5K or 5-mile course or ride a virtual 10- or 35-mile course to complete the race. Special children's fun runs and a 1-mile run/walk challenge are also part of the event. After the race, join us for awards and a food truck afterparty providing healthy foods using a variety locally sourced ingredients.
Proceeds from the event benefit Friends of Cape Cod National Seashore and Cape Cod Healthcare's Cardiac Rehabilitation Program. We have received more than $5,000 in contributions over the past five years.
The race staff are looking for volunteers in a variety of capacities to help prepare for and staff the event. Link HERE to offer your assistance with our thanks.
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Speaking of Volunteers….
Despite the pandemic, a very few volunteer opportunities occurred over the last year. Our annual beach cleanup in coordination with the Center for Coastal Studies was held in late spring of 2021. In addition, the park requested our assistance to lend a hand at the native plant garden at Salt Pond Visitor Center in Eastham. There may be ongoing gardening projects coordinated by Park Historian Bill Burke that can use our assistance. If you have an interest or gardening knowledge and skills, please email us at info@friendccns.org to let us know. We’d be happy to welcome your help!
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Friends of the Cape Cod National Seashore| PO Box 550 Wellfleet, MA 02667| 508-957-0729
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