Long Point Settlement - A research project funded by the Provincetown Community Compact

During the 1800s, three villages—known as the Long Point Settlement, Helltown, and Race Point—as well as a scattering of shacks, were built outside of Provincetown proper along its far-flung shores. The Long Point settlement sat at the very tip of Cape Cod on the sandy spit that encircles Provincetown's harbor. A lighthouse marks the Point’s easternmost extremity, the terminus of an Alice in Wonderland spiral, a mere ribbon of sand undulating into Cape Cod Bay. That unique spiral formed after the Ice Age when sands carried northward along the Cape’s shoreline met the incoming ocean waves traversing Georges Bank. The Long Point lighthouse and the earthen remains of two Civil War forts can be viewed from Provincetown's waterfront. From 1818 to 1858, those sandy wilds housed a community whose hardworking residents were drawn by the bountiful fishing, plentiful lobsters, a surfeit of mackerel during the Spring and Fall migrations, and ease of salt production. The tight-knit community of about 45 houses, a schoolhouse, bakeshop, and pier sat directly across the harbor from Provincetown proper.