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There are plenty of reasons why somebody would want to spend a week or two in Cape Cod during the summer. There are miles of pristine beaches, historic lighthouses, exciting restaurants, and many more things that would attract anybody that needs some time to relax. When people are living it up in their vacation rentals it's safe to assume that aren't thinking about the cape's history, but historians, geologists, and people with a natural penchant for curiosity would love to learn about how the cape came to be. Island Families If land masses had family histories, Cape Cod would be one of the many brothers and sisters in the Outer Lands family. Cape Cod is actually part of an archipelago (a substantial chain or group of islands) in the Atlantic that stretches from Rhode Island to New York. The naturalist Dorothy Sterling named this particular archipelago the Outer Lands, but modern geographers usually refer to the island chains by their regional locations. For much of the cape's history it was covered in the Laurentide ice sheet, a massive sheet of ice that covered almost all of Canada and a good portion of the northern United States. The ice sheet was one of the last prominent glaciers from the Earth's most recent ice age, and it helped shaped a lot of the modern world. Its growth and melting cycle had a profound effect on weather in the Americas. Thanks to its unique placement and melting cycles the jet stream that usually warms the Pacific Ocean was diverted through the southern portions of Montana and Minnesota. The south western portion of the United States that's currently a desert received an abundant amount of rainfall 100,000 years ago, and many of the great lakes were formed when the glacier slowly made its retreat. If it wasn't for the Laurentide Ice Sheet it's quite possible that the Cape Cod we know and love today wouldn't exist. Since a considerable amount of the Earth's water was locked into massive glaciers, the sea level was much lower. When the ice sheet began its retreat around 23,000 years ago many of the cape's famous kettle ponds were formed from the water the glacier left behind. Truro's bayside beaches that are popular tourist attraction used to be a petrified forest, and when the sea levels dramatically raised Truro and other cape areas formed their infamous beaches with intense erosion. Cape Cod's geologic past can help paint a very accurate portrait of the area's future. The erosion process that created the cape's beaches is still happening today, and most geologists agree that eventually Cape Cod will be buried under the Atlantic Ocean. Don't worry about missing your favorite Cape Cod vacation rental, it will be thousands of years before that happens. Take time in the present to enjoy your vacations at the cape, and be sure to think about the area's interesting history.
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Cape Cod vacation rental, natural history, science of Cape Cod,
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