08/18/2026
Cape Cod has been an island since 1914. Most people never think about it that way, but the canal makes it literally true. ⚓
The idea is very old. Miles Standish scouted a route in 1623, and George Washington had the Cape surveyed for a canal during the Revolution, because the trip around the outer Cape was one of the deadliest passages on the East Coast. More than a thousand vessels wrecked off that shore. Nothing happened for nearly three centuries until financier August Belmont Jr. finally funded the dig, and the canal opened as a private toll waterway in July 1914.
It was too narrow and too crooked, ships kept grounding, and traffic never met projections. The federal government bought it in 1928 and the Army Corps of Engineers widened it in the 1930s to 480 feet across and 32 feet deep, making it the widest sea level canal in the world. It runs about 17.5 miles and saves roughly 135 miles of open ocean sailing.
The current is the part that surprises people. Tides push through from both ends, so the water reverses direction roughly every six hours and can run over four knots. The Bourne and Sagamore bridges and the railroad lift bridge all went up in 1933 to 1935 as public works projects, and that lift span is still one of the longest in the country. 🌉
Do you have a spot along the canal path you always stop at, or are the bridges just the thing you sit in traffic on?
