Creating the Cape Cod Canal
Growing up, I had a favorite game, maybe you played it, too. Every time we drove over the bridge, I’d sit up as tall as I could, scanning both sides of the canal and counting boats as quickly as possible. The outcome was predictable: whoever sat on the side of the car with the most boats won.
I’ll admit, I still play. How could you not? Am I really supposed to ignore a canal full of boats and instead focus on how unnervingly close we are to the sidewalk, or the car approaching head on in the next lane?
Of course, this is strictly a passenger’s game. The driver has enough to worry about.
The idea for the Cape Cod Canal took root early. As far back as 1623, Myles Standish recognized the danger of sailing around the outer arm of Cape Cod and imagined a safer, man-made passage. More than a century later, George Washington supported the concept, and in 1776 the first known feasibility study was completed. Still, for generations, efforts to build the canal faltered: designs were drawn, plans proposed, but time and again money ran out or the challenges proved too great. Meanwhile, the journey around the Cape remained perilous; by the 1880s, shipwrecks were occurring at an alarming rate of roughly one every two weeks.
Momentum finally began to build in 1904, when financier August Belmont Jr., a descendant of Sandwich’s Perry and Freeman families, took a serious interest in the project. He acquired and reorganized the Cape Cod and New York Canal Company, which had held the construction charter since 1899. Earlier efforts, near Sandwich’s Town Neck, had already put hundreds of Italian laborers to work with little more than shovels and wheelbarrows, but progress was understandably limited.
With the guidance of civil engineer William Barclay Parsons, Belmont kicked off construction in May 1909. At a ceremonial groundbreaking on June 22, he pledged “not to desert the task until the last shovelful had been dug.” Within a year, the project had expanded dramatically: twenty-six vessels, including ten dredges, were at work. Buildings were relocated, demolished, or repurposed; roads, farms, factories, and even cemeteries vanished from the landscape. Construction, however, was slower than expected. Parsons had underestimated the mammoth glacial boulders his dredges would encounter, forcing crews to bring in divers armed with dynamite to blast a path forward.
Undeterred, Belmont commissioned two massive dredges, the Governor Warfield on the Buzzards Bay side and the Governor Herrick on the Cape Cod Bay side, which dug steadily toward each other, accelerating construction. Infrastructure followed quickly: a 160-foot railroad bridge was completed in September 1910, followed by two electrically operated drawbridges, completed in 1911 and 1912.
By April 1914, only a single dam separated the waters of Cape Cod Bay and Buzzards Bay. In a ceremonial moment marking the near completion of the canal, Belmont and Parsons stood together and released the barrier, allowing the waters to merge. A few months later, on July 29, 1914, the Cape Cod Canal officially opened as a privately operated toll waterway. The occasion was celebrated with a grand Parade of Ships. Among those in attendance was Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, who traveled through the canal aboard the destroyer McDougall. Crowds gathered along the banks, including near Town Neck in Sandwich, where Belmont was honored during the town’s 275th anniversary celebration. William L. Nye of the Sandwich Historical Society presented him with a commemorative loving cup.
The canal saw immediate use: within its first month, some 2,000 vessels passed through. Yet despite its promise, problems soon became apparent.
That same month, a proposal to introduce a ferry across the canal at Bournedale was met with strong opposition. Residents argued that the temporary ferry violated a law passed in 1899, which required all canal crossings to accommodate passengers, vehicles, and highway traffic. Because the proposed ferry would carry passengers only, they contended that it would restrict the town’s and the traveling public’s free use of the highways.
In the Sandwich Independent, an article titled “Our Ferry” appeared alongside news of the proposal, chronicling the service with biting wit. It opened with stark brevity: “Friday: Bridge destroyed.”
What followed was a string of daily anecdotes capturing the ferry’s near-constant dysfunction. Its engine repeatedly failed, leaving the vessel at the mercy of the current, adrift in the canal, bobbing helplessly downstream, at times colliding with another vessel. The snarky, unnamed author seized every opportunity to underscore the absurdity:
“Ferry refused to do duty, went on rampage downstream…”
“Ashamed of past record, on good behavior.”
“Tired of being good, backslid; engine refused to work...”
By mid-August, the situation had grown even more farcical: “Ferry caught fire. All other events insignificant in comparison… Put out by sand. Passengers advised to carry pails of sand in crossing the canal for immediate use in case of an event midstream.”
Yet the Bournedale ferry endured, remaining in operation for eighteen years.
Mariners had also grown wary of the strong currents and narrow drawbridge openings, and a series of serious accidents led to lengthy closures that hurt revenue. By 1915, Belmont was already attempting to sell the canal to the federal government. Ultimately, the project did come under public control. In 1928, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers assumed operation of the canal, ushering in a new era of construction and development that culminated in the completion of the present-day bridges in 1935 and the widening of the waterway as we know it today.
Enjoy the Archives' entire photo album of the construction of the Cape Cod Canal here .
Jen Ratliff is the Sandwich town archivist. The Sandwich Town Archives is supported by the Friends of the Sandwich Town Archives, a dedicated, all-volunteer, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to supporting and promoting the archives’ collections and the rich, diverse history of the Town of Sandwich.
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