Beach
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Bay-side Eastham, where the tide goes out for most of a mile and the name marks a skirmish fought on this sand in December 1620.
Photo: ISS Expedition 16 crewPublic domain
Drive four miles west across Eastham from the Atlantic beaches and you arrive at a different ocean. First Encounter faces Cape Cod Bay, and on a big low tide the water withdraws across sand flats wide enough to walk out on for the better part of a mile, leaving warm shallow pools, ridged sand, hermit crabs and a horizon of standing people who look like they are walking on the sea.
This is the swim most families actually want and do not know exists. The water over the flats has been sitting on sun-warmed sand and comes back in ten to fifteen degrees above the Atlantic side. There is no shore break, no undertow and no cliff staircase. Small children can be put down in six inches of tepid water and left to it.
The name is not a flourish. In December 1620, a shore party from the Mayflower under Myles Standish, exploring the bay before the ship moved on to Plymouth, camped on this beach and was attacked at dawn by a band of Nauset. Arrows were shot, a volley was fired, nobody on either side is recorded as being killed, and the English left. A stone marker in the dunes commemorates it, and it remains one of the few places on the Cape where a national story happened on a specific, identifiable patch of sand you can stand on.
Sunset is the other reason people come. Facing west across the bay, with a mile of wet sand mirroring the sky, this is the photograph the Cape is known for and it happens here rather than on the ocean side.
Turn west off US-6 in Eastham onto Samoset Road and follow it to the end. The drive from the highway takes a couple of minutes, and from the Salt Pond Visitor Center on the Atlantic side about ten.
The Cape Cod Rail Trail passes through Eastham within a couple of miles, so the beach can be reached by bicycle on quiet back roads from the trail, which is a pleasant way to arrive for the sunset.
There is no bus service. Parking is in the town lot at the end of Samoset Road, which fills on hot afternoons and generally clears before the evening.
Skaket Beach in Orleans, the closest equivalent bay beach, is about ten minutes south. Coast Guard Beach on the Atlantic side is about fifteen minutes east.
Check a tide table before you decide what time to arrive. It matters more here than anywhere else on the Cape, because the beach at high water and the beach at low water are two different places and only one of them is the one you came for.
At low tide, the flats run out a very long way — the exact distance varies with the state of the moon, and on a spring low it is genuinely close to a mile. The sand is firm and ribbed, threaded with shallow warm channels, and full of things worth looking at: moon snails, hermit crabs, razor clams, the odd horseshoe crab, and thousands of small holes where something is breathing.
The rule that catches people out is the return. The tide comes back in across a flat surface, which means it comes in fast and it comes in from more than one direction, filling the channels behind you before it reaches you. Nobody drowns walking out; people get cut off in a channel and have to swim a stretch they did not expect. Turn around at the turn of the tide, not after it.
Bring something on your feet. The flats have shell fragments, and an hour of barefoot walking finds all of them.
The Mayflower anchored in Provincetown Harbor in November 1620 and the men spent several weeks exploring the Cape before settling on Plymouth. On the third of those expeditions, a shore party under Myles Standish camped on this beach.
At first light a group of Nauset attacked the camp. Arrows came in, the English fired back, and after a short exchange both sides withdrew. Nobody appears to have been killed. The English called it their first encounter and moved on within hours.
The context is the part the plaque does not carry. The Nauset had reason. English ships had been taking people from this coast as slaves for years before the Mayflower arrived — the Patuxet man Tisquantum, later called Squanto, was among those seized — and an epidemic brought by earlier European contact had already devastated the region's population. The people who attacked the camp at dawn had met Englishmen before.
The marker sits in the dunes behind the parking area, easily missed. It is worth two minutes. The Cape is full of 1620 sites, and this is the one where something actually happened rather than the one where a ship anchored.
First Encounter faces west-southwest down Cape Cod Bay, which makes it one of the two or three best sunsets on the peninsula and the best one that is reachable from the Mid Cape without driving to Provincetown.
For decades there was a hulk on the horizon out in the bay: the SS James Longstreet, a concrete-and-steel freighter used as a military bombing and gunnery target off Eastham from the 1940s. Generations of Eastham children grew up watching aircraft attack it. It has since broken up and settled, and what is left is not much to look at, but if an older local tells you they used to hear the bombing from the porch, they are not embroidering.
First Encounter is a town beach, run by Eastham, and the National Seashore pass is no use here. The town sells a season sticker to residents and renters through its rental agents, and charges a daily rate to everyone else. Both are set annually; ask your rental agent before you buy anything, because a week-long sticker often works out cheaper than five daily rates.
The lot is moderate and it fills on hot afternoons and empties before the sunset crowd arrives, so an evening visit is usually easy even in August. Facilities are basic: seasonal restrooms, no food, no rentals, very little shade.
Against the Atlantic side: First Encounter has warmer water, no surf, no staircase, better shelling of the small-and-interesting kind rather than the dramatic kind, and a sunset. Coast Guard and Nauset Light have the waves, the cliff and the drama. Most weeks on the Cape want one of each, and the drive between them is under fifteen minutes.
Skaket Beach in Orleans, ten minutes south, is the same kind of beach with an even larger flat and an even smaller car park.
Straight-line distances, so allow more on the road — the island is long and has one main parkway.
Beach
Warm, shallow bay water over a flat that empties for most of a mile — and a car park small enough that it shuts by mid-morning in July.
2–5 hoursFree to enter. Town parking is charged in season by daily rate or Orleans beach sticker.3.3 mi away
Beach
A barrier spit with salt marsh behind it, the best bodysurfing on the Outer Cape, and a summer parking rule that catches people out.
2–5 hoursNational Seashore fee: $25 per vehicle per day, or $15 per person arriving on foot or by bicycle.3.5 mi away
Beach
Ocean beach at the foot of a sand cliff, with the Cape's most photographed lighthouse above the stairs and a lot that fills before ten.
2–5 hoursNational Seashore fee: $25 per vehicle per day, or $15 per person on foot or by bicycle.3.5 mi away
Park
Forty miles of protected Atlantic shore, six guarded ocean beaches, and one $25 vehicle fee that covers every one of them for the same day.
3–8 hours$25 per private vehicle per day, valid at all six park beaches. $60 annual park pass.2 mi away
Where this place fits into a day, and the pages that plan one.
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A long way. On a big low tide the flats run out for the better part of a mile, and the exact distance depends on the state of the moon — spring lows around the new and full moon expose far more than the neaps in between. The sand is firm and ribbed, threaded with warm shallow channels. Watch the turn: the tide returns across a flat surface quickly and from more than one direction, and it fills the channels behind you before it reaches you.
Because a shore party from the Mayflower under Myles Standish camped here in December 1620 while exploring Cape Cod Bay, and was attacked at dawn by a band of Nauset. Arrows were shot and a volley returned; nobody is recorded as killed, and the English left within hours. A stone marker in the dunes behind the car park commemorates it. English ships had been seizing people from this coast for years beforehand, which is context the marker does not carry.
Much warmer than the Atlantic side, yes. This is Cape Cod Bay, and at low tide the water sits over a mile of sun-warmed sand flat before it comes back in. The difference against the outer beaches at Eastham, four miles east, commonly runs to ten or fifteen degrees Fahrenheit. There is no shore break and no undertow either, which is why families with small children who have been beaten up by the surf at Coast Guard end up here the next day.
You need to pay for the parking, one way or another. This is a Town of Eastham beach, so a National Seashore pass is not valid. The town sells a season sticker to residents and to renters through rental agents, and charges a daily rate to other visitors, both set annually. If you are staying in Eastham for a week, the sticker usually beats five daily rates. Confirm current prices with the town before you travel.
