Place Information
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Eastham is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, Barnstable County being coextensive with Cape Cod. The population was 5,453 at the 2000 census. For geographic and demographic information about the village of North Eastham, please see North Eastham, Massachusetts. History
Originally settled by the Nauset tribe, Eastham was the site of a hunting expedition of the Mayflower on the Cape Cod Bay side of town, which led to the first encounter of the Pilgrims and the local Nauset tribe. It would not be settled, however, until 1644. The original lands included the towns of Truro, Wellfleet, Eastham, Orleans and a small portion of Chatham. The town was officially incorporated in 1651. Fishing and especially farming were early industries in the town, and writers and artists also came to the town. In fact, it was in Eastham that Henry Beston wrote The Outermost House. The town is is discussed at some length in Henry David Thoreau's Cape Cod as the somewhat rugged site of one of New England's largest summer "camp-meeting" evangelistic gatherings in the mid-1800s. The gatherings were at times attended by at least "one hundred and fifty ministers, (!) and five thousand hearers" at a site called Millennium Grove, in the northwest part of town. (The area is now a residential neighborhood, the only reminder being Millennium Lane.) Today, Eastham is mostly known as the "Gate" to the Cape Cod National Seashore, which was founded in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy to protect Cape Cod's coast from erosion and overpopulation. The town is the site of many beaches, both on the Atlantic and bay sides, as well as the Nauset Light, which was moved to the town in 1923 from its old location in Chatham, and the Three Sisters Lighthouses, which have since been moved away from their now-eroded perches on the coast to a field just west of Nauset Light. Research Tips
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