Attractions

A good place to start any trip to Provincetown, the Province Lands Visitor Center is part of the Cape Cod National Seashore and offers a short film on Provincetown’s history and geology, trail maps and a gift shop. Don’t miss the observation tower, which sits atop the 100-feet-above-sea-level visitor center and features sweeping 360-degree views of the Province Lands’ sand dunes, downtown and the Atlantic Ocean. See the highest point in town, the Pilgrim Monument – which you can also climb – the Old Harbor Museum and the Provincetown Municipal Airport. The visitor center parking lot is also an access for Race Point Beach, the Old Harbor Museum and the Province Lands Bike Trail.

Visitor Center open May 1 – Oct. 31, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. daily. Outside observation deck is open year round.

The lighthouse is a 4-mile walk round-trip from the Race Point Beach parking lot. Distant views of this Cape Cod lighthouse can also be seen from the Herring Cove Beach parking lot.

The first Race Point Lighthouse was erected in 1816, a time when beacons were much needed along Cape Cod’s northernmost shore. The 20-foot stone tower had one of the earliest revolving lights to differentiate it from nearby lights in Truro and Chatham. The tower was replaced with a 45-foot cast iron lighthouse in 1876. 

Today, this distinctive Massachusetts lighthouse is overseen by the Cape Cod Chapter of the American Lighthouse Foundation, which rents out rooms for overnight stays from June – October. The foundation also opens the structure to the public once or twice a month between June and October. Check website for this summer’s schedule. The foundation usually provides oversand transportation on the Sunday during Mariner’s Weekend in May.

This former U.S. Lifesaving Station was established on Nauset Beach in Orleans in 1897 and its staff saved thousands of lives before its deactivation in 1944. Facing the threat of shoreline erosion, it was moved to Race Point Beach in 1977 and is now a museum showcasing old rescue equipment. National Park Service rangers re-enact the rescues at 6 p.m. on Thursdays in the summer.

This 252-foot granite monument is the most recognized structure in Provincetown and maybe all Cape Cod.

The Cape Cod Pilgrim Memorial Association was formed in 1892 for the sole purpose of building a marker to celebrate the Pilgrims taking their first steps in the New World here in Nov. 1620. They signed the Mayflower Compact in Provincetown harbor and explored the area for five weeks before returning to the Mayflower and heading to Plymouth.

Built between 1907 and 1910, the monument gained widespread attention, with U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt laying down the tower cornerstone on Aug. 20, 1907 and his successor, U.S. President William H. Taft, leading the dedication ceremony on Aug. 5, 1910, the anniversary of the Pilgrims’ departure from England. A dinner and ball followed at Provincetown Town Hall.

Today, the monument designed by Willard T. Sears is the tallest all-granite structure in the United States. Visitors can climb its 100-plus steps to the top, where they can take in views of Provincetown’s wharves and buildings against the vast Atlantic Ocean.

Along with serving as a reminder of Provincetown’s rich history, the monument becomes a Christmas tree of sorts during the holiday season. It is lit up each year on the night before Thanksgiving, with white holiday lights running most of its length. The decorations - one of the most visited Cape Cod holiday displays - stay up through New Year’s Day.

The Provincetown Museum is at the bottom of the tower and features a wide array of exhibits about the Pilgrims’ arrival, the Provincetown Players, a replica sea captain’s parlor, the town’s first 1800s fire engine and arrowheads and tools used by the Wampanoag Indians.

This peaceful park overlooks the ocean and features a plaque noting it as the approximate location where the Pilgrims docked on Nov. 11, 1620.

The municipal-owned pier is named for Arctic explorer Donald Baxter MacMillan, a Provincetown native who made his career coming and going into the unknown and gave the nation much of its early knowledge about the North Pole region.

MacMillan was born in 1874 and saw loss early in life. His father died at sea when he was 9 years old and his mother passed away three years afterward. Two years later, MacMillan went to Freeport, Maine to live with his sister and her husband. He later attended nearby Bowdoin College, where he graduated in 1898 with a geology degree.

MacMillan taught in Maine and Massachusetts for several years before starting a summer camp teaching boys navigation. The camp caught explorer Robert E. Peary’s eye and MacMillan was soon traveling north with Peary and making his own voyages to Labrador.

A 1913 expedition to Greenland could have proven deadly, with MacMillan stranded until 1917 when another captain rescued him. But he made the most of the wait, coming up with a design for a ship that could navigate icy waters. He later built the Bowdoin, with which he made many trips north before giving it to the Navy for World War II.

Taking 144 lives and a pirate ship full of riches, the Whydah’s sinking on April 26, 1717 was the worst Cape Cod boat disaster and had long plagued shipwreck aficionados – until 1984, when archaeological diver Barry Clifford found the treasure off Wellfleet.

Clifford and his team have since pulled up more than 200,000 artifacts, including dozens of cannons and 15,000 coins, but the recovery continues. As they work, visitors can get a taste of the mission at the museum and gift shop, each like finding a pirate treasure in and of itself.

Summer – Halloween, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. daily. Call first to check hours.

Though not as mighty as Pilgrim Monument, the Provincetown Town Hall commands full attention in its own right, with its turquoise-dusted tower and handsome black clock looming over bustling Commercial Street.

Dedicated at a lavish ceremony on Aug. 25, 1886, the Town Hall was erected to replace a municipal building lost to fire, on land donated by the Rev. W.H. Ryder. The Hon. J.P. Johnson supplied the clock and John F. Nickerson contributed the bell.

Town Hall holds municipal offices on the first floor and a large 700-seat auditorium upstairs that is used for everything from government meetings to play productions.

In recent years, Town Hall has been the stage for the ongoing national debate over gay marriage. The town clerk’s office has led the state in number of gay marriage licenses issued since Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriages on May 17, 2004, hitting the 1,000^th license mark in the first 13 months. The town continues to issue marriage licenses to out-of-state couples as it seeks a Supreme Judicial Court ruling that the marriages are legal, despite a 1913 law as some argue.

Though it happened a century ago, Provincetown’s excitement and pride over the Rose Dorothea’s win in the 1907 Lipton Cup race continues strong. This stone marker states the silver cup trophy Capt. Marion Perry brought home is displayed inside the Town Hall, but it in fact was moved to the entrance of the new library at 356 Commercial St. in June 2006. The library’s second floor holds a half-size replica of the 108-foot long Rose Dorothea, which was made for $75,000 in the 1970s by Francis “Flyer” Santos.

The Lipton cup bears only the name of the Rose Dorothea because Thomas Lipton – of the Lipton tea empire – never sponsored another race in Boston, despite a pledge to do so annually among Provincetown, Gloucester and Boston’s fishing fleets.

Nestled between Town Hall and the Pilgrim Monument is Bas Relief Park, which showcases the bronze bas relief sculptor Cyrus Dallin made in 1921 for the 300^th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ landing in Provincetown. Dallin’s 9-by-16 foot bas relief shows the Pilgrims signing the Mayflower Compact. The text of this agreement is on a plaque attached to a nearby rock.

Another marker honors the five Mayflower passengers who died while the ship was docked in Provincetown harbor. They are William Butten, Edward Thomson, Jasper More, James Chilton and Dorothy Bradford. The latter was the wife of soon-to-be-governor William Bradford. She drowned after falling over the side of the Mayflower on Dec. 10, 1620. All five are buried in the Old Cemetery on Winthrop Street.

Commissioned for the 300^th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ landing, the memorial to the five passengers was originally placed on High Pole Hill Road and moved to Bas Relief Park in 1969.

Built by carpenter Seth Nickerson in 1746, this is widely believed to be the oldest Provincetown house standing.

Grab an ice cream bar and pull a stool up to the window. This small old-fashioned pharmacy offers a front row seat to people watching on colorful Commercial Street – and has for more than a century.

The pharmacy is the oldest Provincetown business to continuously operate in one location. It was opened by Dr. John M. Crocker in 1869, only to be sold to John D. Adams in 1875. The Adams and Cook families ran it until 1971.

Provincetown’s ever-shifting sand dunes, glistening sun and fishing fleet heading to sea have long inspired the artistic brush.

Artist Charles Hawthorne is credited with starting America’s first art colony by opening the Cape Cod School of Art here in 1899. Hawthorne and several other artists went onto establish the Provincetown Art Association and Museum in 1914, providing a venue to display work and further expanding Provincetown’s artistic reach.

The museum’s collection holds work from over 1,000 artists who have worked on the outer Cape and it now hosts jazz and dance performances as well. The original part of the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. 

Theater is central to the Provincetown art colony heritage and the movement all began on a wharf. Writer Mary Heaton Vorse began summering in Provincetown in 1907 and bought a home at 466 Commercial St. In 1915, she bought Lewis Wharf and a battered fish shed off this site and a magical meeting of creative minds occurred here the next summer. Eugene O’Neill, an unknown 27-year-old playwright who went onto Pulitzer Prize fame, launched his career on Lewis Wharf on June 28, 1916 with, “Bound East for Cardif.” Creativity stirred all summer and the legendary Provincetown Players group was officially started here on Sept. 5, 1916.

The group had only a few years before Lewis Wharf fell in during a winter storm in 1922, but the spirit lives on at the Provincetown Playhouse, based at 501 Commercial St. Mary Heaton Vorse also wrote about the time extensively in her celebrated book, “Time and the Town.”

On another note, many of the famed Provincetown sand shacks where O' Neill and other theater greats like Tennessee Williams and painters historically sought inspiration remain standing and are available for rent through a lottery. Two groups that rent Provincetown beach bungalows are the Peaked Hill Trust at 508-487-1930 and the Provincetown Community Compact, which can be reached at 508-487-1930 or www.thecompact.org

Founded in 1976, the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies conducts research to protect the waters off Cape Cod and the whale population. It operates the Atlantic Large Whale Disentanglement Network at 800-900-3622.

The Provincetown fine arts center was established in 1968 to support fledgling artists in their early careers, though its founders were giants in the art and literary worlds: Robert Motherwell, Myron Stout, Jack Tworkov, Alan Dugan and U.S. Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz.