When Henri David Thoreau traversed the outer dunes of Provincetown in the 1850s, he called the landscape a “desert”, where one was faced with “a tide of sand driven by waves and wind, flowing slowly from the sea to the city. Some brave brave the dunes “night and day in heavy weather, looking for wrecks, to unload the cargo, etc., and this is how the castaways are rescued”.
The Spartan lifeboat stations that were set up on Cape Cod’s outer coast slowly became a collection of beach shacks, occupied first by local fishermen and then by generations of their families and friends in the summer. As a thriving arts colony grew in Provincetown, the dilapidated buildings were used by authors and poets such as Tennessee Williams and ee cummings as a haven for their writing. Jack Kerouac wrote part of On the road surrounded by the crashing waves. Eugene O’Neill was known for hosting nudist parties throughout the summer.
When the Cape Cod National Seashore was created by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, the dunes became the property of the National Park Service, which originally wanted to raze the cabins and allow nature to run free. A decades-long legal battle ensued, between the US government and the families who had lived and maintained historic structures through season after season of bad weather. The residents eventually won, but most of them were only given lifetime leases to use the properties, after which they would revert to the NPS again.
A view of the Dune Shacks in the historic Peaked Hill Bars district. Photo: NPS/Frost.
The time allotted for many of these agreements has since passedand the NPS opened a public auction process on eight of the huts in May, giving whoever wants spend time, energy and money to maintain historic structures with a 10-year lease. Annual rents range from just $2,000 for a studio-sized building to $16,000 for a multi-room house with a guest house. Most huts lack running water or electricity and have only outbuildings.
The application deadline is July 3 and applicants should submit a personal financial statement to ensure they can afford to maintain the properties, and it is suggested that they make their bids competitive by offering pay more than fair market rent.
The movement met with a shock and contempt long-time cabin residents and local curators. Tuesday, a little sit in was held back by several of them in protest THE expulsion by 94-year-old artist Salvatore Del Deo, who lived and worked for decades at Frenchie’s Shack, named after the friend who originally built it. Del Deo’s wife, Josephine, was one of the key figures in the preservation of the cabins when the National Park Service took control of the properties.
A online petition to keep Del Deo in the cabin was signed by more than 12,000 people, and local politicians also tried to change the park department’s mind. Massachusetts Rep. Bill Keating released a letter on Twitter, co-signed by Senators Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren, asking that the agency “consider all available options to legally allow Mr. Del Deo to reside at Frenchie’s Shack.”
“The NPS is committed to ensuring equitable access to public lands,” a National Park Service spokeswoman said in an email to the boston globe. “Persons who overstay terminated living estates without legal permission have used public land for their private and exclusive benefit and, like anyone occupying NPS property without legal permission to do so, it is expected that let them leave.”
Wednesday, the day Del Deo was to vacate the property, The Park Rangers came to Frenchie’s Shack to ensure that it has been emptied, according to the Cape Cod weather, but found a family friend occupying the space. She and other Del Deo supporters refuse to leave the site as local politicians meet with Home Office officials to negotiate a way for Del Deo to stay at the shack.
“When I saw this place, I said it was like the beginning of life on Earth. It’s elemental, spiritual,” Del Deo told the Provincetown Independent. “I am a painter and a pantheist, and I love nature. We are big compared to the tiny little things that are in the woods, and we walk there, not knowing that we are walking on something that is alive. Inadvertently, in our innocence, sometimes we destroy things.
“I think the park is like that, a huge monolithic thing,” he added. “They want to do well. But sometimes they miss the forest for the trees – and they destroy an oasis that people had created out of nothing but wreckage and wreckage.
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