This Cape Cod trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and runs the whole 65 miles from the Bourne and Sagamore bridges to Race Point. It covers the Pilgrims' first landfall and the Mayflower Compact in Provincetown Harbor, Bartholomew Gosnold naming the Cape in 1602, the canal that turned it into an island, and the National Seashore that John F. Kennedy signed into being from his summer White House in Hyannis Port. There are questions on the 15 towns and their claims to fame, the lighthouses that had to be moved back from the eroding bluffs, Marconi's wireless station, Woods Hole and the discovery of the Titanic, Edward Hopper's Truro, Wellfleet oysters, Cape Cod potato chips, the Falmouth Road Race and the wooden-bat baseball league that has sent more than a thousand players to the majors. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reliable source. Perfect for a rainy day at the rental.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Cape Cod forms the southern boundary of which body of water that stretches northeast to Nova Scotia?
Gulf of Maine
Cape Cod Bay and Massachusetts Bay are both part of it. Buzzards Bay lies to the Cape's southwest.
Q 02Which English explorer coined the name Cape Cod in 1602?
Bartholomew Gosnold
It is the ninth-oldest English place-name in the United States. Originally it applied only to the very tip, where Provincetown now sits.
Q 03Cape Cod is legally coextensive with which Massachusetts county?
Barnstable
The county has 15 towns and a population of about 229,000, nearly a third of whom are 65 or older, the oldest average age in New England.
Q 04How many towns make up Cape Cod?
15
They run from Bourne and Sandwich at the canal to Provincetown at the tip. Barnstable is the only one with a city form of government.
Q 05Which body of water lies between the peninsula and the Massachusetts mainland?
Cape Cod Bay
It is bounded on the north by a line from Provincetown to Marshfield. Nantucket Sound lies to the south, where beach water can reach 70 degrees.
Q 06Since 1914, what has separated most of the peninsula from the mainland?
A man-made canal
The seven-mile canal was completed in 1916 and shortened the New York-to-Boston shipping route by 62 miles. Many agencies now treat the Cape as an island for planning purposes.
Q 07Which two highway bridges carry traffic across the Cape Cod Canal?
Sagamore and Bourne
Both opened to traffic on the same day, June 22, 1935. A railroad bridge also crosses the canal.
Q 08Which financier directed construction of the working canal that began in 1909?
August Belmont Jr.
Toll revenue disappointed, and the federal government bought the canal in 1928. The Army Corps of Engineers now maintains it toll-free.
Q 09By how much did the canal shorten the sea route between New York City and Boston?
62 mi
Ships no longer had to round the treacherous outer Cape, whose shoals had wrecked hundreds of vessels.
Q 10Where did the Pilgrims make their first landing on November 11, 1620, before moving on to Plymouth?
Near Provincetown
They had sighted the Cape two days earlier. The Mayflower Compact was drawn up and signed while the ship lay in Provincetown Harbor.
Q 11The Pilgrim Monument at the tip of the Cape holds what architectural distinction?
Tallest all-granite structure in the United States
Built between 1907 and 1910 and dedicated by President Taft, it was modeled on the Torre del Mangia in Siena, Italy.
Q 12Which Italian tower served as the model for the Pilgrim Monument?
Torre del Mangia in Siena
The Siena original was designed by Agostino and Agnolo da Siena in 1309. Provincetown's copy commemorates the 1620 landfall.
Q 13Which president created the Cape Cod National Seashore in 1961?
Q 21Robert Ballard of the Cape's ocean-research institution co-led the 1985 expedition that found which wreck?
RMS Titanic
The joint French-American team with IFREMER located the wreck off Newfoundland on September 1, 1985.
Q 22What kind of bats does the Cape Cod Baseball League use?
Wooden
The switch came in 1985, making it the only collegiate summer league in the country using wood at the time. More than 1,000 alumni have reached the majors.
Q 23In what year was the Cape Cod Baseball League formally organized with four teams?
1923
Falmouth, Osterville, Hyannis and Chatham were the founding clubs, though a Barnstable-Sandwich game had been played every Fourth of July since at least 1885.
John F. Kennedy
Much of the 43,607-acre coastline from Orleans to Provincetown had already been slated for housing subdivisions.
Q 14In which village is the Kennedy Compound, JFK's 'summer White House'?
Hyannis Port
Joseph P. Kennedy bought the property in 1928, and the family still keeps residences there.
Q 15From which Cape Cod town did Marconi make the first US transatlantic wireless transmission?
Wellfleet
Theodore Roosevelt used the equipment for the 1903 message to King Edward VII. The beach below the bluffs is now called Marconi Beach.
Q 16Which is the oldest and tallest lighthouse on Cape Cod?
Highland Light
George Washington authorized the first station on the site in 1797. The current 1857 tower was moved 450 feet back from the eroding cliff in 1996.
Q 17Why were two of the Cape's lighthouses, including Nauset Light, moved inland in 1996?
Coastal erosion threatened to topple them
Highland Light was 110 feet from the sea and Nauset Light just 37 feet from the bluff when the movers arrived.
Q 18Which Cape Cod town, founded in 1637, is the oldest on the Cape?
Sandwich
It is home to the Dexter Grist Mill, Hoxie House and the Sandwich Glass Museum, a legacy of Deming Jarves's colored lead-glass works.
Q 19Which Cape Cod town is home to a federally recognized Wampanoag tribe?
Mashpee
The Wampanoag helped the Pilgrims survive their first winter at Plymouth. The tribe won federal recognition in 2007.
Q 20Which famous ocean-research organization, founded in 1930, is based in a village of Falmouth?
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Founded in 1930, it is the largest independent oceanographic research institution in the U.S. and operates the deep-diving submersible Alvin.
Q 24How long is the Falmouth Road Race, held on the third Sunday of August?
7 miles
Bartender Tommy Leonard dreamed it up as a run from the Cap'n Kidd bar in Woods Hole to the Brothers Four in Falmouth Heights. About 100 people ran the first one in 1973.
Q 25Which singer's 1957 record 'Old Cape Cod' became the peninsula's unofficial anthem?
Patti Page
Claire Rothrock, Milton Yakus and Allan Jeffrey wrote it, and Mercury released it as the B-side of 'Wondering' in April 1957.
Q 26Which naturalist wrote the book Cape Cod, based on visits from 1849 and published posthumously in 1865?
Henry David Thoreau
He found the Cape nearly treeless from colonial land use. He walked its outer beach four times between 1849 and 1857.
Q 27Which American painter owned a summer house in Truro and painted Corn Hill and Cottages at North Truro?
Edward Hopper
His Cape canvases from the 1930s also include Rich's House, Cold Storage Plant and Cottages at North Truro.
Q 28Kalmus Beach on the Mid-Cape is named after Herbert Kalmus, an inventor of what?
Technicolor
He left the beach to the town on condition it never be developed, possibly one of the first open-space preservation deals in the country.
Q 29Which town at the 'elbow' of the Cape has become known as a hub of great white shark activity?
Chatham
A booming gray seal population off Monomoy has drawn the sharks. The ocean also broke through Chatham's barrier island during Hurricane Bob in 1991.
Q 30Which town's shellfish are celebrated at an OysterFest every October?
Wellfleet
Oyster beds drove the town's early economy alongside whaling and fishing.