Moonlit Provincetown Harbor Sparkles in Gorgeous, Rarely Seen, Vintage Postcard

Click to enlarge ithis gorgeous image of PTown Harbor by moonlight., ca 1907.

This unusual postcard view of Provincetown Harbor by moonlight shows a fisherman and his young son setting out in their dory in the wee hours of the morning, heading off for a day's work, long before the sun would rise behind them.

I'm guessing that this postcard dates back to about 1907, give or take a year or two. In a small boat like this one, these two could have gone out to sea, but perhaps working close to shore would have been more likely. They may not have even left the harbor. Not all fishermen of that day shipped out for months at a time in a Grand Banks schooner.
Although many sailed with a large crew of men, aboard a big schooner bound for the distant, rich fishing grounds of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, there were several other ways to fish close to home. The deep waters surrounding Provincetown had long been summer feeding grounds for many varieties of schooling fish such as mackerel, herring and tuna. In fact, PTown had nearly been named Herringtown when it was incorporated in 1727. There were often large schools and sizable fish close to shore, and even right in the harbor.

This pair of fishermen may have used hand-held lines, or perhaps they were seiners. See my post about seining in Provincetown, learn how it was done, and enjoy another great old postcard on that page. It shows two men fishing from a small boat right in Provincetown Harbor, using a purse seine, which was one of the most environmentally friendly fishing methods ever developed.
On that page you'll also see how tiny fishing shacks, houses, markets and big industrial buildings were packed in cheek-to-jowl along the waterfront. Some were squeezed in four and five deep between Commercial Street and the harbor beach, with little docks and enormous wharves jutting into the harbor, leaving hardly any open beach at all along great stretches of the shoreline during the height of our fishing era.
I'll bring you more of these great postcards in upcoming posts, along with vintage photos and tidbits of Provincetown's incredibly rich history. In the meantime, clicking on pictures and other links on these pages will lead you to more information and wonderful images of PTown, both past and present.
Thanks for reading and sharing my blog!

What's Wrong With This Picture? Happy April Fool's Day

What's wrong with this postcard of Pilgrim Lake, published in Provincetown
somewhere around the 1910s? Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Click on the photo at the left to enlarge this antique postcard, published around the year 1912 by The Advocate, which was by far Provincetown's leading purveyor of postcards in the early 20th Century.
Have a good look and notice just how many things seem a little out of whack in this picture...

During this era, color on a postcard was achieved by having an artist hand-tint an existing black-and-white photograph, and seems often to have been done by someone who may not actually have seen the subject. Flowers or trees, for example, were often painted in by an artist, to add interest to a scene, or puffy clouds were painted into a sky just too turquoise to be real. Just such a postcard artist once spruced up a photo of our Town Hall by giving it a red roof. Yikes!
Keep in mind that these were the days long before computers and Photoshop. That word became a verb back in the 1990s as nearly everyone could easily alter any digital image, enhance colors, or even combine elements from many photos to create a whole new picture, as long as they could afford the software. But I'm always amazed to find early images that have clearly been altered, with a single photograph often given several incarnations by various publishers, with the cut-and-paste technique tediously done by hand a hundred years ago.
See how many questionable things you might notice in this postcard, and then enter TheYearRounder's annual April Fool's Contest by sending an e-mail message to theyearrounder@wildglobe.com, or leave a voice or text message by phone. Just dial 42423-PTOWN (424 237-8696) by 2 AM on April 10th, 2016. The winner (decided by a random drawing from all timely entries if there is a tie) will be treated to something good to eat, courtesy of a great Provincetown restaurant. As usual, a prize or two may also be awarded randomly, for no particular reason at all, so you don't even have to be right to win a prize. You just have to enter on time. Happy April Fool's.

Can Anyone Identify this PTown Location?

Can you identify this spot? Help me if you can.

Does Anyone recognize this spot, or know the name "The Bars" as the title of this postcard reads? Printed a bit faintly in the upper right corner of the card is "c. 710 The Bars, Provincetown, Mass." I've never seen, nor even heard of this place, which certainly doesn't mean that it didn't exist, but I find it curious. For one thing, there aren't a lot of tree-covered hillsides around town, as seen toward the back of this view.
In my vast collection of photo and postcard images of Provincetown and its history, there are a number that were incorrectly labeled by the publisher, and I'm wondering if this is another of those. That doesn't seem very likely, though, since the publisher was the Advocate, the venerable Provincetown publisher that put out the weekly town paper of the same name, and also ran what may have been the largest postcard operation on Cape Cod, publishing their own cards.

Now Waydowntown, the old Advocate Building is still quite charming.

There was another building, attached at the back of 265 Commercial Street, where the newspaper was printed, but most of the postcards of that era were printed in Germany, owing to the superior quality of prints achieved by the skillful Germans and their very advanced presses. The early Advocate postcards were no exception.
Boston architect T. M. Sargent designed the storefront with rather oversized windows to show off the cards, newspapers and souvenirs offered to a tourist trade that was already beginning its steady growth by 1911, when this shop was built in the center of town, right across the street from Town Hall. The windows above, made up of a couple of hundred tiny panes, create one of my favorite architectural details on Commercial Street. The decorative woodwork above and below the windows also helps to make this building one of the most charming in town.
For a time the postcard business even seems to have spilled into the next building to the east through a "hyphen," a small addition built between two structures to join them. As it turns out, there are quite a few hyphenated buildings in Provincetown.
At any rate, there's a bit of the history of The Advocate Building, as it was known. Now, back to my question… Does anyone know a spot in Provincetown called the Bars? If so, please leave a comment here, or e-mail theyearrounder@wildglobe.com, or call me at 42423PTOWN. This one has me stumped.

A Provincetown Path Long Gone

A lovely view of Provincetown Harbor was found down Hollyhock Lane.

At one time there was a lovely little footpath known as Hollyhock Lane between 271 and 273 Commercial Street, between the buildings that are now Tin Pan Alley and Board Stiff.
The path lead from Commercial Street, in front of Town Hall, to the beach and the harbor. It was chock-full of greenery and flowers, mostly hollyhocks, and this scene was the subject of many popular postcards over quite a period of years.

This card had several printings over the years, with
this same photo colored differently at least three times.

The postcard above has no postmark to show its time period, but the white border dates it somewhere between 1915 and 1930, when WW I had caused American printers to begin conserving ink by printing short of the edges, with a colorless border left around the images on the postcards they were printing.
On the left, this popular postcard of the day shows a woman posing on the footpath in the view from the opposite direction, seen as one would walk up Hollyhock Lane from the beach toward Commercial Street, Town Hall and the Pilgrim Monument.
As with other early footpaths around town, this one is gone today. A little trail between the buildings still exists, now hidden by a large wooden gate, but this former flower-lined path is no longer that charming little walkway open to the public, and no longer leads folks to those gorgeous views of the beach and Provincetown Harbor.
There are still a few nice little footpaths to the harbor and to other spots around PTown, though, and I'll try to feature some of them shortly, but in the meantime, keep an eye out for a couple of these that you just might find on your own.

A Bit of Cranberry History

In this 1906 postcard, Cape Codders pick cranberries by the six-quart pail, the standard measure by the 1870s.

It's cranberry season in the sandy outskirts of Provincetown, in the very low spots where the water tends to pool up in the spring rains. You can look for them off of Province Lands Road, on either side, in the low spots before the road rises to meet Race Point Road on the little hill near the Province Lands Visitor Center. There are also wild cranberry bogs in the very low spots of the dunes, sometimes quite near the trails used by the dune tour and the folks staying out there in the old dune shacks.
Cranberries are one of only three fruits that are native to North America, along with the blueberries, which you'll find around Provincetown in early summer, and Concord grapes, which inspired the name given to Martha's Vineyard by British explorer Bartholomew Gosnold when he visited the island in 1602. Gosnold also gave Cape Cod its name on May 15th, 1602, after having named it Shoal Hope that morning, but that's another story, told in my article about Cape Cod's 413th Birthday, sort of...
In the 1906 postcard above, these folks seem to be in groups, perhaps families, each harvesting the cranberries in their allotted area, marked out in plots of equal width running the length of the bog. It looks as though this may have been a wild bog where everyone was to have an equal chance to gather a fair share of the berries. Read my article from last autumn to learn about Provincetown's Cranberry Vote of 1773, enacting the law which provided for stiff penalties for anyone caught poaching the berries before the season. The dollar fine mentioned there may not seem like much, but a 100 pound barrel of cranberries shipped to be sold in Philadelphia in 1868 brought 58 cents, so a buck was a lot of money. Cranberries had become a food source for those early New Englanders, and a valuable commodity for trading as well.

This 1910 postcard, hand tinted from a black a white photo, shows the newly
developed rocker scoop, with its long fingers pushed along beneath the vines
and then "rocked" back to pluck the berries, which rolled down into the scoop.

The use of the humble cranberry dates back to the year 1550, when Native Americans began using it not only as a medicine to apply to wounds, and as a dye for blankets and rugs, but also as a staple of their diets. Crushed cranberries were often blended with dried venison and rendered fat to make pemmican, which may have been the world's first energy bar. In 1620 the Pilgrims met the Native Americans, who showed them many uses for cranberries, and in 1683 the settlers made their first cranberry juice.
In 1816 Captain Henry Hall accidentally became the first to cultivate cranberries, at his home in Dennis, in the center of Cape Cod, when he cut down a stand of tall trees on his property. He hadn't realized that without the trees acting as a windbreak, sand would blow in and cover his cranberry blog. He though that this "mistake" had surely ruined the bog, but noticed with some delight that his cranberries actually grew better than ever that year, leading him to begin experimenting with using sand to cover the bogs to varying degrees and at different times of the year. Eventually, he hit on the combination of factors that would best maximize his crop.
By the 1820s, Cape Codders were growing cranberries in sufficient quantities to ship them to be sold in a growing European market. By 1843 Eli Howes was actively cultivating his Howes variety of cranberries in East Dennis, a few miles east of Hall's land, and by 1847, Cyrus Cahoon was busy developing his Early Black variety just a few more miles to the east, in the town of Harwich.
In 1850 cranberries became a source of vitamin C for fishermen, whalers and sailors who ate them to ward off scurvy while they were away at sea for months or years at a time, with any other fresh fruits or vegetables onboard being consumed within the first few weeks of the voyage. Over the next few years the first cranberry scoops began making harvesting the berries quicker and easier, and in 1854 the first census of cranberry acreage reported 197 acres in Barnstable County, which comprises all of the towns and villages of Cape Cod.
This unusually warm weather coming this week should make it a pleasure to grab a bucket and take a stroll out through the bogs. If you do go out picking cranberries, don't confuse them with bearberry, which are also red berries growing on little vines on the ground, but are generally smaller and kind of shiny, and humans shouldn't eat them in large quantities.
Although I'm not sure how the dearth of rain this summer will have affected the cranberries, they should probably be ripe by now, likely with more of them ripening over the next few weeks. They may be a bit smaller than usual due to the lack of rain, but if there were enough bees to pollinate them well, we should have plenty of berries to pick.

Seining Was an Early PTown Fishing Method

Seiners are likely after mackerel in Provincetown Harbor in the early 1900s.

Two fishermen have cast a purse seine in Provincetown Harbor in this postcard sent in 1906.
Imagine a very long rectangle of netting with floats attached along the length of one of the two long edges, so the net hangs in the water like a curtain.
The long bottom edge of the net is weighted down a bit by a series of metal rings running the length of the bottom edge, with a long rope, or "purse line" threaded through the rings. The net is set in a large circle, as you see in the postcard above, around a school of fish swimming near the surface. When the purse line is pulled the rings are drawn together like a drawstring purse, so the fish can't escape by "sounding" or diving down and swimming away. Then, as the net is drawn in, the circle gets ever smaller, bringing the fish alongside the boat to be scooped in. On a larger boat the whole net full of fish might be pulled into the boat.
This was a common way to catch "schoolers," which are any of a number of fish that swim together in schools, like herring, mackerel, some varieties of small tuna, and others. Provincetown had a sizable mackerel fleet, numbering into the dozens of larger mackerel boats in the late 1800s, and seining was an efficient way to catch this abundant species.

Champion Clam Digger?

"Carl" the Champion Clam Digger is a mystery man.

I've had the digital image of this vintage Provincetown postcard in my collection for years, and this morning I decided to find out what I could about "Carl" in the image above. I've googled every possible combination of key words I can think up, and I can't find a thing. I also tried the Althea Boxell scrapbooks on the Provincetown History Preservation website, also to no avail.
Clam digging by individuals rather than by seafood companies was common in earlier days, when quahogs, steamers, sea clams and even razor clams were easily dug on nearly any beach in Provincetown. Clams were found in many traditional Portuguese recipes, as well as in the ubiquitous clam chowder, and were often used as fishing bait. They weren't expensive, and many families simply dug their own.
You can still dig your own clams today, at the proper time of year, which is now. Stop by Town Hall and get a recreational shellfishing permit, allowing you to gather clams and oysters, seasonally, once a week, either on Fridays or Sundays. Residents and non-resident property owners are charged $15 for this annual license, while non-residents will pay $50, and seniors age 65 and older pay nothing at all.
You'll need a 10-quart pail, a clam rake (found at the local hardware stores) and a shellfish gauge, which you can pick up at Town Hall when you get your license. They'll also give you a copy of the rules, such as sizes of steamers, quahogs and oysters you can harvest, hence the need for the gauge, which is required for you to set out on the tidal flats. Rubber boots will help keep your feet dry as you slosh through wet sand on your quest for delectable seafood, yours for the digging.
Visit the town's Shellfish Regulations page on their website for more information. Be sure you know the rules, gather your mollusks only in designated areas, and be sure to report your catch to the shellfish constable, who keeps statistics on the town's annual harvest, as you leave the beach. Mussels, by the way, can be taken any time of year and require no permit, along with sea worms and periwinkles.
Meanwhile, who has information on "Carl" in the photo above? Call, text or phone TheYearRounder with any insights. My contact info is near the right corner above.
Happy digging!

This Vintage Postcard Shows the Pilgrim Monument in an Unusual Light

Provincetown's Pilgrim Monument, shown in the moonlight
in this vintage post card, is now open daily for the 2013 season

The Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum (PMPM,) once again welcomes visitors as their 2013 season gets under way with an exciting new exhibit in the East Gallery. A private collection of Eastern Rig Dragger boat models, built in 1/24 scale by late Truro resident Alfred J. Silva, Sr., is now on display. Born in Provincetown, Mr. Silva knew the local fishing fleet intimately, building tremendous detail into his models of boats that sailed in the Provincetown fleet from around 1950 to 1972.
Also featured are works of art by Provincetown artists Sal Del Deo, born 1928; Nancy Whorf, 1930 - 2009; and Arthur Cohen, 1928 - 2012. You'll find more on Arthur Cohen in the column of artists running down the right-hand edge of this page.
For a spectacular view for miles in all directions, you can climb to the top of the Pilgrim Monument, the tallest all-granite structure in the country, at 252 1/2 feet tall. It is perched on a hill that stands 90 feet above the harbor as well, so the view is superb. This is one of the great Photo Ops of Provincetown, so remember to take your camera with you, and a sweater for the breeze. Even if you don'y want to climb the monument, which takes the average person about ten minutes, from the lovely grounds at the base of the monument you'll have a splendid view of the harbor.
The museum at the base of the monument is well worth a visit as well. Learn about the Pilgrims first landing, the early theater days of Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams and others, important artists, the whaling and shipwreck days and much, much more. The gift shop there has some nice souvenirs of your visit and a wonderful variety of books about Provincetown history and lore.
At this time of the year PMPM is open from 9 AM to 5 PM, with their last admission for the day at 4:30 PM. The hours will be extended to 7 PM from Memorial Day to Labor Day, with last admissions at 6:30 PM. You'll find it in the center of town, at the top of High Pole Hill. You can walk up the hill, or there is paid parking available on the grounds, as well as wheel chair access. Enjoy your visit.

Frank Cook's Big Fish, Caught Near Provincetown's Wood End, c.1910

The black-and-white photo of Frank Cook posing with his 270 pound halibut, c.1910,
was later turned into one of the most popular postcards of the next few decades, shown above.

Somewhere around the year 1910, Frank Cook was out one day in his little dory, fishing with a hand-held line, off the shoreline beyond Wood End. That's out beyond the spit of sand you'll find winding its way around the harbor if you walk out on the breakwater in the West End, toward Wood End Light. This spot got its name, by the way, because when the Pilgrims arrived here in 1620, that's where the woods ended. There were groves of trees and thickly forested areas found in spots all over the cape in those early days, and the forest in Provincetown came right down to the edge of the beach in that spot. 

So Frank was out in Cape Cod Bay, which lies beyond that bit of sand that runs between Wood End and Long Point. He was by himself, dangling a hand-held line from his dory and hoping for a fish to come along. Not all fishermen of the day sailed off with a crew on a large boat. There were many who fished from their own small dories and skiffs, seldom ranging far from the shoreline, since Provincetown is surrounded by deep waters. Good-sized fish were sometimes found quite near the beaches.

When he felt a tug on his line Frank began to pull it in, but he must have been startled as he realized what was on the other end of that line. It turns out a lumbering, 270 pound halibut had taken Frank's bait!

Alone in his boat, Frank somehow managed to land his catch, pulling a fish twice his size into his tiny craft. His dory must have been a "double-ender," having a pointed bow on either end, because hauling a fish that size over the side of a boat with a square stern would likely have swamped the boat. Once his catch was landed, Frank rowed more than five miles around Long Point and into the harbor, heading for a place equipped to handle such an enormous fish. When it had been unloaded and hoisted up to weigh it, Frank posed for this picture standing next to his halibut, holding the hand-line he had used to haul in the fish.

That black-and-white photo eventually evolved into a hand-colored post card that was very popular in PTown souvenir and gift shops for about 50 years, until the newfangled "chrome" style of glossy color photo cards began springing up in local shops in the 1960s. But these old-fashioned, hand-tinted photo post cards are still among those most prized by collectors today. And this is a fish folks still talk about.

A Bit of PTown Nostalgia

Old postcards like this one, presumed to be set somewhere in the 1940s, take us back to an earlier day in Provincetown, with many of folks here able to remember days gone by when there were a number of wharves along the waterfront.
During this period in our history there were grocery stores on Commercial Street, a couple of them at the corner of Commercial and Standish, where the Lily Pond and the Governor Bradford stand today. There were quite a few schools around the town and dozens of kids could be found on the streets in any given neighborhood, and another dozen down on the wharves any day of the week in the summertime, diving into the water after the coins tossed into the harbor by tourists. In those days Commercial Street was a two-way street, with traffic moving in both directions, and with parking allowed!
The title at the top of this postcard calls it a "quaint harbor scene" of Provincetown. I've found a number of these old postcards on the Internet, and I sometimes buy them when they turn up on eBay or in other spots at a reasonable price. I'll share more of these in future posts about the history of the town. If you have a collection of your own, I'd love to show some of them here, and I'd love to hear about anyone else's recollections of PTown in days gone by.