Jutting over seventy miles into the Atlantic Ocean, Cape Cod has long been an obstacle to navigation. Over the past 300 years, there have been over 3,000 shipwrecks on the Cape, mainly along the outer shore between Provincetown and Chatham. Lighthouses have warned mariners away from the ‘ocean graveyard.’ During the 19th-century heyday of lighthouses, keepers were needed to tend the kerosene in the lamps. Adjacent to the lights were houses for the lighthouse keeper’s, many of whom led solitary existences along with their families. After the Cape Cod Canal opened in 1914, ships traveling from Europe to Boston toward New York and points south were able to bypass the Cape’s outer shore. The number of shipwrecks declined dramatically because of both the Canal, and a transition away from sail-powered wooden vessesl. As the 20th century progressed, technological improvements made many lighthouses obsolete and they were decommissioned. By the 1960s most of the remaining lights had become automated. Cape Cod has had over twenty lighthouses operating along its shores over the past 200 years. Today, seven lighthouses still operate and several other decommissioned lights stand along the coastline.

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