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Remembrances Of Leavitt Crowell (Part 3)

Updated: Jul 17

Can you imagine military people on Town Neck Beach shooting off rifles for training?


I can’t either, but I take it the population was so low and Town Neck not even developed, that there were no people to disturb.


Leavitt Crowell reminds us that the value of land, especially on the interior of Cape Cod in the 1920s and 1930s, was very low. Most of the state forest was taken over by Camp Edwards, paying $2 an acre maximum. Much of the land went for 50 cents per acre.

Camp Edwards circa 1940
Camp Edwards circa 1940

‘Forest fires were a problem because once the Indigenous people moved off the land, the forests were not well taken care of and the controlled burns no longer performed annually. The Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era program begun during the Roosevelt administration, fortunately created what were called fire breaks and carefully planned the replanting of the 6,000 acres of the state forest. Another of the reasons for this was to replenish a market for timber. If you look at old photos, you will see that much of Cape Cod was empty of trees, all used for industry, fuel and building.

Typical Fire Tower on Cape Cod in the 1930s.
Typical Fire Tower on Cape Cod in the 1930s.

As Leavitt reports, in an attempt to control fires when they did occur, a whole network of fire towers with human observers was established, beginning in Bournedale all the way to Wellfleet.


Each tower was equipped with an “alidade” table covered with a map and a sight arm mounted in the center. The observer would take the azimuth bearing on any suspicious smoke, and by triangulation with the azimuth bearing from another tower, the smoke’s location could be accurately pinpointed.


Of course, firefighting was a volunteer job back then. Firefighters were paid 50 cents an hour, and high school boys were released from school to fight forest fires. Any training, I wonder? Finally in the 1930s someone came up with the idea of water trucks that could carry several hundreds of gallons of water. They would follow what were called brush breakers into the forest. Water was also pumped over long distances using those hoses from the nearest body of water.


It seems impossible for us to imagine in 2023 that Sandwich was such a sleepy town of the 1920s and ‘30s that, per Leavitt, social life centered around the evening mail. Let us pick up his story here:


“The night train from Boston came about six-thirty and the mail was brought up

from the station by the Coffee brothers. People would crowd into the Post Office

until there was no more room with late comers spilling out onto the sidewalk. This

is where one met one’s friends, talked politics, the younger set made their plans for

the evening, and Dr. Beale did a large part of his practice on the sidewalk.

Sandwich Post Office at the Corner of Main & Jarves circa 1920
Sandwich Post Office at the Corner of Main & Jarves circa 1920

“There was a certain pecking order as to where one stood in the Post Office

waiting for Mrs. McPharlin to finish distributing the mail and throw up the general

delivery window. The men all stood with their backs to the wall emitting great clouds

of smoke from their pipes and cigarettes. The women and girls occupied the wall

nearest the boxes and the young children stayed pretty much in the center of the

room, with teenagers by the desk and window.


“One evening while I was a senior in high school, I was standing with the men

smoking my pipe when the town constable took it upon himself to tell me to

stop smoking; and as I was surrounded by men smoking pipes, I thought he was

joking. When I ignored him the constable reached up, grabbed my pipe of which

I was very proud and threw it into the gutter. I went to retrieve it and he followed

me shouting that when he told me to do something I had better do it. When I found

my pipe, it was broken. When I bent to pick up the pieces he put his foot on the

broken stem. At that point I laid a very heavy punch to his stomach and another

to his jaw knocking him down to the ground. While flat on his back he shouted, ‘

You’re under arrest for assaulting an officer.’”


“As he had his breath knocked out of him and could not walk, I picked him up

and carried him across the street to the Deputy Sheriff. In court, my lawyer filed

a counter suit for assault. When I got to the part of picking the constable up and

carrying him to the Deputy so he could arrest me, the judge burst out laughing,

found me not guilty and lectured the constable.“



Kaethe Maguire is a member of the Friends of the Sandwich Town Archives, a dedicated, all-volunteer, 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to supporting and promoting the archives’ collections and the rich, diverse history of the town of Sandwich. 

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