Mission Bell | “Professors Row” | Dune Shack 5 (Wolfe)
[2021, Dunlap]
[2022, Dunlap]
[2009, Dunlap]
Mildred Champlin and Andrea Champlin. [2021, Dunlap]
[2022, Dunlap]
[2022, Dunlap]
Mildred Champlin. [2022, Dunlap]
[2009, Dunlap]
[2009, Dunlap]
[2009, Dunlap]
[2009, Dunlap]
Text last updated in 2015 | Mission Bell is the popular name for this cottage on Professors Row, though the bell — a useful navigational landmark out in the dunes — was salvaged in 1955 not from a mission but from a one-room schoolhouse in Michigan. The shack was built by Dom Avila and Jake Loring in 1936 and bought in 1953 by Mildred Champlin and her husband, Nathaniel, a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit and a lecturer at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Unlike most shoreline buildings, it has managed to stay in one place over the years; as has the Champlin family, which has continuously occupied the cottage for six decades, now under a stipulation of settlement with the government running for the lifetime of the Champlins’ children. It’s the shack closest to the wreck of H.M.S. Somerset.
Gail Cohen wrote on 15 February 2019: The Champlins were in court 18 years. They proved their property rights. They were suppose to be paid $200,000, the same amount the Adams in court 16 years received. Their dune shacks were appraised as ocean front property. The Cape Cod National Seashore/National Park Service claimed no money, so they gave Mildred and Nat the dune shack for the lifetime of their children. The others were given 25 years or for their lifetime. Frenchie (Jeanne Chanel) would not sign the stipulation. The Feds gave in and gave her lifetime for her daughter Shatzi [Adrienne Schnell]. She got the same deal as the Champlins without going to court!
About the shacks
Along the Back Shore, settlement meets sea, and the built environment is humbled. The Pilgrim Monument looks distant, almost inconsequential. There is no place for human-engineered grandeur against the mighty Atlantic Ocean, the treacherous Peaked Hill Bars, and the towering, ever-shifting dunes. Instead, snugness, modesty, and adaptability are rewarded. Structures perform the most elementary services of salvation and shelter.
From the Old Harbor station to the Truro line are Provincetown’s 15 renowned dune shacks. (Three more — the Wells, Jones and Armstrong shacks — are slightly east of the Truro line. They’re included in the Peaked Hill Bars Historic District, but not in Provincetown Encyclopedia.)
The very notion of these shacks is happily inimical to precision. Dates, occupants, and anecdotes will inevitably differ among sources. There isn’t even an agreed-upon naming convention. Provincetown Encyclopedia borrows the west-to-east numbering system used by Robert J. Wolfe in his seminal 2005 study for the Park Service, “Dwelling in the Dunes.”
The shacks are a source of identity to the town and a half-century of tension between residents and the National Park Service. The definition of cultural landmarks has expanded to embrace such eccentric structures, which once would have been swept away to render the seashore as pristine as possible. Indeed, some shacks were razed, leaving the dune community especially wary of the park service’s intentions. It wasn’t until 2010 that a comprehensive management plan was advanced for all 18 shacks.
In 2023, the dune shack community — whose members trace their occupancy back as far as the 1940s, long before the creation of the national seashore — was convulsed by an ominous new threat. The service announced that it would evict most current residents and re-lease the structures, apparently putting a premium on getting top dollar. When the rangers came for 94-year-old Salvatore Del Deo, as they did, the story drew the attention of the national press (including The New York Times) and of Senators Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren. The park service was compelled by political pressure, bad press, and local outrage to relent — just a bit. As I write this summary in November 2023, however, the situation remains fluid. (This was the most recent development: “2 of 8 Leases May Go to Local Applicants; But One Previous Dune Family Gives Up, Worn Down by the Process,” by Paul Benson, The Provincetown Independent, 21 November 2023.)
If you want to see the shacks for yourself, the best way is on foot, but this can be arduous. It makes sense for a newcomer to get the lay of the land in one of the SUVs operated by Art’s Dune Tours. The business was founded in 1946 by Arthur J. Costa as Art’s Beach Taxi and is continued by his son, Robert Costa.
Important dune etiquette: If you go out to see the shacks, please maintain a respectful distance from them. Dune residents are out there for solitude, tranquillity and privacy, not to entertain strangers or answer questions.
¶ Republished on 27 November 2023.