Cape Cod

About Cape Cod

Cape Cod (or simply the Cape to most New Englanders) is a peninsula nearly coextensive with Barnstable County, Massachusetts and forming the easternmost portion of the state of Massachusetts, in the Northeastern United States. The Cape's small town character and beachfront brings heavy tourism during the summer months.

Although the Cape was originally connected to the mainland, the Cape Cod Canal, which opened in 1914, technically transformed Cape Cod into a large island (though it is not normally referred to as such). Three bridges span the canal from the Massachusetts mainland to the Cape. Vehicles can cross onto the Cape via the Sagamore Bridge and the Bourne Bridge; the other is the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge.

Cape Cod comprises almost all of Barnstable County. Two of the county's fifteen towns (Bourne and Sandwich) include land on the mainland, "off-Cape", side of the canal. The towns of Plymouth and Wareham, in adjacent Plymouth County, are sometimes confused to be part of Cape Cod but are not located on the peninsula, and the 1914 completion of the Cape Cod Canal separated them from the towns on the Cape proper. "Cape Codders", or people who live "on Cape", generally refer to all land on the mainland side of the canal as "off-Cape."