Let's Go: A Birthday Celebration: Cape Cod Canal

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By Linda McK. Stewart
Before the year slides over the horizon, subsiding in a blaze of autumnal glory, you might take a moment to congratulate the Cape Cod Canal on its 100th birthday.
A ho-hum occasion, you say?  Not so for everyone. Before 1914, all north-south coastal traffic had no choice but to navigate out and around the tip of Cape Cod, passing through treacherous waters replete with ever-shifting shoals and powerful currents. Shipwrecks were commonplace.
The idea of a shortcut by means of a waterway joining Buzzards Bay on the south side of the Cape to Cape Cod Bay on the north side of the Cape dated as far back as 1623. Miles Standish of the Plymouth Colony sketched just such a passageway on the colony’s maps. Such an excellent idea, it was endorsed by every successive generation of seafarers.
In his day even George Washington signed onto the idea, ordering extensive surveys of the Cape to determine the best possible route for such a project.  Again and again for almost 300 years, the idea of a Cape Cod Canal was explored in dozens of proposals but always the obstacles to its construction just seemed insurmountable.
The story of how the canal finally came to be is in large part the story of one man’s exuberant imagination. August Belmont, Jr. of legendary financial fame, exasperated by numerous failed attempts to construct a waterway  between Cape Cod Bay and Buzzards Bay took matters into his own hands.   In 1907, he purchased the charter for such a waterway from the near-defunct Cape Cod Canal Co. Actual digging began in 1909. Seven years later in July 1914, the Cape Cod Canal, 17.5-miles long was completed and opened to seagoing vessels.
It was immediately hailed as a welcome alternative to sailing out and around Cape Cod, a journey of some 135 miles of treacherous ocean.
Today the Cape Cod Canal is a vital link in the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. More than 20,000 vessels sail through it every year. Over the years it has been repeatedly dredged, deepened and widened. It is the widest such land-level waterway in the world and rated as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. Originally privately owned, supported by tolls, it is now toll-free, government-owned and open to the public at no charge.
Access roads parallel the canal on both sides, thereby providing cyclists with one of New England’s best maintained, most picturesque biking routes. From Sailworld in Buzzards Bay (508-759-6559) rental bikes are available all year round.
For very good reason, swimming  in the canal is strictly forbidden. It’s not only a question of  nonstop boat traffic traveling in both directions but it’s also a matter of the currents. They run fast and, of course, they change direction every six hours with the turning of the tide. Probably the best way to explore the Cape Cod Canal is by taking the three-hour cruise with Hyline Cruises (508-295-3883), located at the Onset Town Pier in the little hamlet of Onset, just at the entrance to the canal.
The tours traverse the entire length of the canal and the narration that comes with the tour covers a lively, altogether fascinating chunk of American maritime history. An added dividend is the unimpeded view from Onset’s public beach of the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge. Unique in its design, the span is 544-feet long, weighing 2,050 tons. It links trains between the mainland tracks and the tracks on the Cape side of the canal. It functions by virtue of a complicated system of radio signals by which the train’s engineers work with marine traffic controllers and patrol boats to assure the interlocking of the bridge with the tracks. The passage of a train, accompanied by plenty of boat and engine whistles and bells, never fails to draw a crowd of gaping onlookers, camera and cellphones at the ready.
Over the years, Cape Cod has steadily grown from a primarily summer destination into a succession of year-round communities. Baby Boomer retirees now compete with a younger generation of at-home computer operators who no longer must depend on 9-to-5 urban employment.
Cape Cod today is a far cry from its summertime-only profile.
The Cape Cod Canal, 100 years after its debut, is one of the nation’s busiest, most scenic and most useful of the nation’s waterways.
Happy birthday, Cape Cod Canal.