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Early Forests and Trees

When the Pilgrims first entered the wooded areas all along the shores of the Cape, they found there a wide variety of trees. Some of these were extremely important to them, such as the sassafras trees.

Sassafras, a large tree with yellowish flowers, was valued for its dried leaves, and the American sassafras leaves were supposed to have great medicinal qualities. Therefore, some vessels, instead of taking on other kinds of cargoes, would ship as much sassafras as their hold would contain and sail back to Europe with it.

Then there were white oaks, white pines, black walnuts, hickories, and chestnuts, all trees of beauty and usefulness. Moreover, in later years, when glassmaking became so important a local industry on the Cape, it was not the sand at Sandwich which led its maker to glassmaking there but the abundance of wood which could be cut up and used for firewood to supply the heat required in the glassmaking process.

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