Herring Cove Beach | Formerly New Beach
Herring Cove Beach in the 1980s, by David Jarrett. [Courtesy of David Jarrett]
[2009, Dunlap]
[2008, Dunlap]
Off Herring Cove Beach. [2010, Dunlap]
[2010, Dunlap]
Text last updated on 7 February 2017 | There aren’t many places on the Atlantic coast where you can watch the sun set over the sea. No wonder, then, that Herring Cove Beach counts sunset-watchers among its many visitors. (Never mind, for a moment, that the sun is actually setting over Cape Cod Bay and that it is Bourne, Mass., in the distance — not Asia.)
There are still old-timers who refer to it as New Beach. Actually, the name Herring Cove is older. It appears plainly on the critically important Map of the Extremity of Cape Cod, prepared between 1833 and 1835 by Maj. J. D. Graham of the U.S. Topographical Engineers. On Graham’s map, “Herring Cove” is slightly north of where we put it today, around the entrance to Hatches Harbor. What we now call Herring Cove was known in the early 19th century as Lancy’s Harbor.
Herring Cove Beach offers something for everyone, generally in degrees of abandon that correspond to distance from the parking lot. To the extent that one can generalize about such things, Herring Cove Beach’s southernmost crescent, reaching around to Wood End, is predominantly the preserve of men, who have been frolicking naked there since at least 1948, when the Advocate noted the arrest of eight young men — all out-of-towners — for appearing “on a bathing beach within the limits of the Town of Provincetown without personal covering.” Sixty years later, town leaders felt compelled to put up notices at beach entrances noting, “Sex in public places is against the law.”
Kate Clinton said lesbians tended to stay farther upland because they don’t like to carry things. “I’ve seen lesbians get out of the car in the parking lot, look around and say, ‘This looks good right here.'”
¶ Republished on 15 December 2023.