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The Forest Primeval

When the explorer Champlain, and later John Smith, explored the coast of Cape Cod, and when Captain Myles Standish first landed at Provincetown in November of the year 1620, much of the land was covered with a primeval forest of beach, red oak, and hornbeam.

Following the settlement of this region, this forest quickly disappeared. The trees were cut down to make clearings for houses, and to furnish lumber for the houses. The topsoil or humus was thus exposed to the hot summer suns and parching breezes and strong winds; it quickly dried out, or was burned off by forest fires; and was replaced by barren land weeds pitch pine and scrub oak predominating; and poison ivy, blueberries, huckleberries, bayberry and cat brier thickets, and such plants as bearberry and trailing arbutus found a home in it.

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