Buzzards Bay and the Canal That Changed the Coast
Near Plymouth, Massachusetts
Buzzards Bay is the wide arm of sea that Cape Cod shields from the Atlantic, and for centuries ships hugging the New England coast had to sail all the way around the Cape's outer shore, a treacherous passage responsible for countless wrecks, to get from the bay to Cape Cod Bay and points north. The solution was the Cape Cod Canal, built by financier August Belmont and opened on July twenty-ninth, nineteen fourteen, with Franklin Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, among the dignitaries aboard the inaugural flotilla. The canal connects Buzzards Bay to Cape Cod Bay, saving vessels up to about a hundred and thirty-five miles of open-ocean sailing around the cape.
The government bought it in nineteen twenty-eight for about eleven and a half million dollars. Route Six crosses it on the Bourne Bridge, one of two vertical-lift bridges that carry traffic over the waterway.
