Barnstable County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. At the 2020 census, the population was 228,996. The county seat is Barnstable. The county consists of Cape Cod and associated islands (some adjacent islands are in Dukes County and Nantucket County). Barnstable County was formed within the Plymouth Colony on June 2, 1685, including the towns of Falmouth, Sandwich, and others to the east and north on Cape Cod. Plymouth Colony was merged into the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1691.
History
Giovanni da Verrazzano Cape Cod is described in a letter from the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano to Francis I of France, relating the details of a voyage to the New World made on behalf of the French crown in the ship Dauphine, the only surviving of a fleet of four. Text reproduced by permission from Sailing from Madeira in 1524, the Dauphine made land in North Carolina in March. It sailed north to Newfoundland, mapping the coast and interviewing the natives, whom he found friendly south of the cape, but unfriendly north of it. To the north of an island that reminded Verrazzano of Rhodes, the Dauphine made its way with difficulty over shoals "never less than three feet deep" extending "from the continent fifty leagues out to sea," which Brevoort, based on their extent, has identified as Nantucket Shoals. Verrazzano called them Armellini. On the other side was a promontory, Pallavisino, which is probably the cape, as they sailed along it for "fifty leagues." Details of the north end are not given, but subsequently they came to a "high country, full of very dense forests, composed of pines," which, according to Brevoort and others, resembles the coast of Maine.
Bartholomew Gosnold After Verrazzano, what is now the eastern United States acquired the map label of New France, but France had no way to develop it. Scattered colonies in the wilderness of a few dozen men could not be supported until the foundation of Quebec in 1608. Meanwhile, the paper claim did not deter entrepreneurs. In March 1602, Bartholomew Gosnold set sail from Falmouth, Cornwall, in the ship, Concord, transporting a crew of eight, an exploration party of 12, and 20 colonists, with the intent of establishing a trading post in the New World. Intersecting the coast of Maine, they turned to the south, encountered what appeared to be an island, and dropped anchor in Provincetown Harbor. Gosnold at first called the land Shoal Hope, but after discovering it was a cape, and acquiring a hold full of cod from the abundant schools in Cape Cod Bay, he changed the name to Cape Cod.
Gosnold explored the cape, establishing good relations with the natives there, approximately 1500 members of the Nauset Tribe, closely related in language and custom to the Wampanoag people of the mainland, and under their sovereignty. John Brereton, chaplain of the expedition, reported that they were dark-skinned, customarily nude except for deerskins over the shoulders and sealskins around the waist, and wore their long, black hair up in a knot. They painted their bodies. Some knew a few English words, which is something of a historical problem, as Gosnold and his companions are believed to have been the first English to land in America. Gosnold made a point of describing how healthy the people appeared.
Subsequently, Gosnold sailed around the cape to discover an island, "full of wood, vines, gooseberry bushes, whortleberries, raspberries, eglantines, etc.," as well as large numbers of shore birds. He named it Martha's Vineyard after his daughter. Another island nearby, Cuttyhunk Island, he named Elizabeth Island, in honor of Elizabeth I of England, from which the Elizabeth Islands take their name. He intended to place a trading post there, but when the time came for the return voyage, the colonists decided not to remain. Gosnold ventured a second time to the New World in 1608 as Captain John Smith's second in command of the Jamestown expedition. After three months there, he died of malaria.
Martin Pring In 1603, another mercantile expedition set sail from Bristol, England, in two ships, the Speedwell and the Discoverer, commanded by a 23-year-old captain, Martin Pring. Elizabeth I had died two weeks earlier, but Pring had secured permission from Sir Walter Raleigh, who held from the queen exploration rights to all of North America. Pring's expedition reached the New England coast in the summer of 1603, exploring portions of present-day Maine and Massachusetts in search of sassafras, which was then prized in Europe as a remedy for syphilis and other ailments. Pring's party landed on Cape Cod, where they spent several weeks gathering sassafras and trading with the local Wampanoag inhabitants, before returning to England with a profitable cargo. The voyage helped publicize the commercial potential of the region and influenced later English colonization efforts.
Founding of the county On June 2, 1685, the General Court of Plymouth Colony established Barnstable County as one of three counties in the colony, alongside Plymouth and Bristol. The new county was named for the town of Barnstable, itself named for the English port of Barnstaple in Devon. At its founding, Barnstable County included the towns of Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth, Eastham, and Falmouth. When Plymouth Colony was merged into the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1691, Barnstable County was retained intact, and additional towns were incorporated within its boundaries over the following two centuries.
Colonial era and the Revolution Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Cape's economy was built around small-scale farming, fishing, coastal trade, and the harvest of salt hay from the extensive marshes that fringed its bays. A solar-evaporation sea-salt industry, pioneered by Captain John Sears of Dennis beginning around 1776, became one of the major industries in nearly every Cape town through the early and mid-nineteenth century before fading by 1900 with the arrival of railroads and refrigerated commercial salt from elsewhere. During the American Revolutionary War, Cape Cod ports were vulnerable to British naval action; on April 3, 1779, a British fleet fired on Falmouth, but an attempted landing was repulsed by local militia under Colonel Nathaniel Freeman and Major Joseph Dimmick. The Cape produced several prominent figures of the revolutionary era, including James Otis and Mercy Otis Warren of West Barnstable.
Whaling and maritime era In the nineteenth century, the Cape's economy turned increasingly to the sea. Provincetown, Wellfleet, and other Outer Cape ports developed substantial whaling and cod-fishing fleets, while shipbuilding and coastal trade flourished in mid-Cape towns. The county's population peaked at 35,990 in 1860 before entering a long decline driven by the collapse of whaling, the rise of steam-powered shipping that bypassed Cape ports, and emigration of young people to the cities and the West. By 1920 the population had fallen to 26,670, well below mid-nineteenth-century levels.
Railroad, tourism, and the Cape Cod Canal The arrival of the Cape Cod Branch Railroad in the 1840s and its extension to Provincetown in 1873 transformed the regional economy, opening the Cape to summer tourism from Boston and beyond. Resort hotels, cottage colonies, and artist communities developed in towns such as Provincetown, Chatham, and Falmouth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1914 the Cape Cod Canal opened, connecting Cape Cod Bay to Buzzards Bay and physically separating the Cape from the Massachusetts mainland; the canal was later widened and acquired by the federal government, with the Bourne Bridge and Sagamore Bridge opening in 1935 to carry road traffic over the new waterway.
Cape Cod National Seashore and the modern era On August 7, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed Public Law 87-126, establishing the Cape Cod National Seashore and permanently protecting approximately 40 miles of Outer Cape shoreline and inland habitat from development. The post-war decades saw a rapid expansion of the Cape's year-round and seasonal population, with county population growing from 46,805 in 1950 to 222,230 by 2000 — a nearly five-fold increase driven by tourism, retirement migration, and the spread of second-home ownership. In 1989 voters approved the Barnstable County Home Rule Charter, restructuring county government around an Assembly of Delegates and an elected board of County Commissioners. The county today is one of the few in Massachusetts that retains a meaningful functioning county government.
Geography According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (70%) is water. It is the second largest county in Massachusetts by total area. It has about of shoreline.
Barnstable County is not co-extensive with Cape Cod. The latter is a geophysical place defined by its insular or peninsular landmass. According to Freeman, it is a "long, irregular peninsula" between , measured along the north or the south shores respectively, and between wide. Originally, only the tip was considered the cape, but as it was settled the name extended from its tip to the shortest line across the isthmus. Barnstable County, on the other hand, is a geopolitical and legal entity. It is the area contained within the borders of all cities and towns defined to be in the county by the Massachusetts General Court. These borders were decided in episodes of disputed legislation during the centuries since the founding of Plymouth Colony.A history of this extensive legislation through 1860 on a town-by-town basis can be found in
The main difference between Cape Cod and Barnstable County is the band of water up to several miles wide extending from the shoreline to the outermost county border. The offshore area contains significant maritime life, is a recreational and transport medium, and contains historical material lost in shipwrecks.To protect this area, Barnstable County created the Cape Cod Commission, giving it control over the oceanic waters within county jurisdiction, excluding the bays, the river mouths, and the Cape Cod Canal. Its final plan, completed in 2011, includes maps showing the total extent of Barnstable County, most of which is oceanic, including most of Cape Cod Bay, half of upper Buzzard's Bay, and some of the waters south of the cape.
The highest elevation in the county is , at the summit of Pine Hill, on Joint Base Cape Cod, in Bourne. The lowest point is sea level.
Adjacent counties Barnstable County borders Plymouth County to the northwest; off Barnstable County's southern shore are Dukes County and Nantucket County.
National protected areas Cape Cod National Seashore Mashpee National Wildlife Refuge Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge
Demographics With a median age of 55 years as of the 2020 census, Barnstable County is one of the oldest in the country.
2020 census
As of the 2020 census, the county had a population of 228,996. Of the residents, 14.3% were under the age of 18 and 32.2% were 65 years of age or older; the median age was 55.0 years. For every 100 females there were 91.4 males, and for every 100 females age 18 and over there were 89.4 males. 97.2% of residents lived in urban areas and 2.8% lived in rural areas.
The racial makeup of the county was 85.8% White, 2.9% Black or African American, 0.5% American Indian and Alaska Native, 1.4% Asian, 0.0% Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, 2.4% from some other race, and 6.9% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race comprised 3.5% of the population.
There were 103,368 households in the county, of which 18.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them and 29.9% had a female householder with no spouse or partner present. About 33.0% of all households were made up of individuals and 19.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.