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The town and the beaches
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Visitors who head straight for the beaches miss out on Provincetown's tiny core, centered on the three narrow miles of
Commercial Street
.
MacMillan Wharf
, always busy with charters, yachts and fishing boats (which unload their catch each afternoon), splits the town in half. Not far away in the quieter
East End
, the
Heritage Museum
, at the intersection of Commercial and Center streets (daily 10am-6pm; $3), stands in an 1860 Methodist church. This well-tended collection of Provincetown memorabilia includes a 68-inch stuffed striped bass, a Portuguese altar, a model fishing schooner and a reconstruction of the beach hut of Harry Kemp, beach-bum poet and crony of Eugene O'Neill. It also has leaflets on walking tours. Further out, the delightful
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
, 460 Commercial St (May-Oct daily noon-5pm & 8-10pm; Nov-April Sat & Sun noon-4pm; $3), displays paintings by local artists.
The 252ft granite tower of the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum on High Pole Hill, in the pretty West End of P-Town, has an observation deck (only accessible by stairs and narrow ramps) which looks out over the whole of the Cape (daily: July & Aug 9am-7pm; April-June & Sept-Nov 9am-5pm; $6). At the bottom of the hill on Bradford Street, there's a bas-relief monument to the Pilgrims' 1620 Mayflower Compact , in which they agreed to unite as one body to build the first colony. Further from the wharf, the weathered clapboard houses have colored blinds, white picket fences, and wildflowers spilling out of every crevice. The 1746 Seth Nickerson House , 72 Commercial St (June-Oct daily 10am-5pm; $2.50), is the oldest house in town, built by a ship's carpenter. Tours lead through the cabin-like rooms with slanting doors and crazy floorboards. A modest bronze plaque on a boulder at the western end of Commercial Street commemorates the Pilgrims' actual landing place.
A little way beyond the town's narrow strip of sand, undeveloped
beaches
are marked only by dunes and a few shabby beach huts. You can swim in the clear water from the uneven rocks of the two-mile breakwater, where the sea bed crunches with soft-shell clams, or head through scented wild roses and beach plums to find blissful isolation on undeveloped beaches nearby. West of town,
Herring Cove Beach
, easily reached by bike or through the dunes, is more crowded but never unbearably so. In the wild
Province Lands
, at the Cape's northern tip, vast sweeping moors and bushy dunes are buffeted by a deadly sea, site of three thousand known shipwrecks. The
visitor center
(April-Nov daily 9am-5pm; tel 508/487-1256), in the middle of the dunes on Race Point Road, has an observation deck from which you might spot a whale. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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United States,
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