Bound J | Dunes’ Edge Campground | 386 Route 6
Bound J sits near a picnic table at Dunes’ Edge Campground like a small monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. [2019, Dunlap]
Map showing the bounds of the Province lands … (1893). Boston Public Library. Norman B. Leventhal Map Center. Call number G3764.P78 1893.M3.
[2019, Dunlap]
Left: Mark Adams of the National Park Service on an inspection of Bound J. [2019, Dunlap] Right: The bound stone. [2019, Dunlap]
Text last updated on 7 May 2021 | Certain picknickers in the Dunes’ Edge Campground are lucky enough to have a monumental bit of history as their silent meal companion. This is one of 15 granite bounds, or markers or monuments, that delineate the irregular border established in 1893 between the state-owned Province Lands and the Town of Provincetown, in which property could be held privately. They are incised with the legend “STAT. 1893 CHAP. 470” (Statutes of 1893, Chapter 470) on one side and “P. L.” (Province Lands) on the other, together with a letter designation.
The Province Lands was a great swath of the Cape tip that had been claimed by Plymouth Colony for the common benefit of European occupiers. The acreage gained its name in 1692 when the colony was subsumed into the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The land kept its name even after passing into the hands of the successor Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Town of Provincetown was incorporated within the Province Lands in 1727. The minor detail that the government held title to the land underneath them didn’t deter the fine townspeople from occupying and conveying properties privately to one another. Confusion reigned. The state declared in 1854 that “no adverse possession or occupation [in other words, the state of affairs in Provincetown] shall be sufficient to defeat or divert the title of the Commonwealth.”
As usual, folks in Provincetown paid little heed to threats from Boston, though they were careful to convey properties by “quitclaim” deeds, since sellers couldn’t assert quiet and clean title, given the state’s claim. It wasn’t until the sitting of the General Court in 1893 that the Town was effectively split from the 3,200-acre Province Lands to the north and west. The Town included the private “Great Lots” of the East End; spaghetti-thin parcels that stretched from harbor to ocean along a 25-degree, north-northwesterly angle. Private rights to these lots north of Route 6 was extinguished in the 1960s, when the federal government condemned the dune properties for the Cape Cod National Seashore.
¶ Republished on 29 December 2023.