National Seashore to Host Community Conversation about Change on Cape Cod

Date: October 14, 2016
Contact: William Burke, 508 255-3421 ext. 0301

Cape Cod National Seashore will host a community conversation, "The Changing Cape: A Conversation about Protecting Places that Matter in Our Communities," on Tuesday, October 18 from 7:00-8:30 PM at Salt Pond Visitor Center in Eastham. The conversation is part of a series of programs led by University of Massachusetts Historian Dr. David Glassberg. The public is invited to hear and share stories and view contemporary and historical photographs that highlight changes on Cape Cod.

According to Dr. Glassberg, in the half-century since the establishment of Cape Cod National Seashore in 1961, there have been dramatic social, economic, and ecological changes on Cape Cod that in combination, threaten to alter or even obliterate storied landscape features and ways of life on the Outer Cape. Participants at these community conversations will consider and discuss places on Cape Cod that they care about the most, the environmental threats these special places face, and what actions might be taken to protect them for future generations.

In anticipation of these conversations, local residents are sharing their ideas on a Facebook site (www.facebook.com/changingcape).Dr. Glassberg is leading similar conversations on Wednesday, October 26, from 6:30-8:00 PM at Wellfleet Public Library, and on Sunday, November 6, from 2:00-3:30 PM at Provincetown Public Library.

David Glassberg, the founding director of the UMass Amherst Public History Program, is the author of "Sense of History: The Place of the Past in American Life," and a co-author of "People and Places on the Outer Cape: A Landscape Character Study," a report prepared for Cape Cod National Seashore based on a similar series of community conversations on the Outer Cape in 2003.

For more information about the upcoming community conversation, contact David Glassberg at [e-mail], or 413-210-6699.

The project is co-sponsored by Cape Cod National Seashore, the UMass Amherst Public History Program, the Center for Coastal Studies, the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, the Truro Historical Society, Save Truro Seashore, the Eastham Historical Society, the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum, and Mass Audubon's Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.