Pamet Cranberry Bog: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Cape Cod National Seashore

Killion, Jeffrey; Flynn, Clare

The Pamet Cranberry Bog is part of Cape Cod National Seashore, a unit of the National Park Service that comprises over 43,000 acres of protected shoreline, salt marshes, freshwater kettle ponds, lighthouses, a life-saving station, dune shacks, and Cape Cod-style houses. Located in Barnstable County, the 28.25 acre site is situated on North Pamet Road in North Truro. The property features three former cranberry bogs, a bog house and shed, driveway, pond, and remnants of sand pits, irrigation ditches, culverts, levees, and fruit trees surrounded by rolling sand hills. These features were essential to the site’s use as a commercial cranberry bog from 1888, when it was purchased and developed by James F. Howe, until 1962 when the last private cranberry grower, Tonda C. Haynes, sold it to the National Park Service. The Bog House sits in the center of the site on a small neck of land between the eight-acre east bog and the four-acre west bog. The house is a two story wood frame structure that rests on a poured concrete foundation and is covered with weathered wooden shingles. Originally a single story residential structure dating to ca.1830, it was moved to the property in 1888 and soon thereafter raised to provide storage and work space for cranberry operations on the first floor and living quarters on the second floor. Outside of the house there is a poured concrete loading platform and several old black cherry trees, which extend along the drive from the house to North Pamet Road. Behind the house is a small wood and shingle shed used for the cranberry business. To the south is a small pond and the one-acre south bog that borders North Pamet Road. Although the pump that once drew water from the Pamet River into the pond is gone, water still flows from the pond into a network of ditches and culverts used to drain and flood the bogs, which are now overgrown and transitioning to shrub wetlands. The house and bogs are surrounded by rolling uplands now covered in successional woodland vegetation, but just beyond the property are higher knolls that offer good views of the site, the high dunes and sand hills the border the Pamet River valley, and the Atlantic Ocean. The Pamet Cranberry Bog Trail offers access through the property and adjacent park lands. Waysides provide visitor interpretation, but the Bog House is closed to the public and there are no visitor facilities currently available.

Pamet Cranberry Bog: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Cape Cod National Seashore

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