Grand View observation platform
Grand View observation platform in 1961. [Scrapbooks of Althea Boxell 9:101 / Dowd Collection / Provincetown History Preservation Project Page 4280]
Grand View in 1955. [Scrapbooks of Althea Boxell 2:84 / Dowd Collection / Provincetown History Preservation Project Page 1281]
Text last updated on 31 December 2023 | The commanding view of the Back Shore offered at the Province Lands Visitor Center is one that spectators knew about long before the current building was constructed. Indeed, the dune on which the Visit Center sits was known for many decades as Grand View.
(Today, its official name, as recorded with the Board on Geographic Names, is “Ocean View Hill.” It was known in the 19th and early 20th centuries as “Negro Head Hill,” “N….. Head Hill,” or “N…..head Hill,” for reasons I have yet to uncover. The Dictionary of American Regional English contains 11 definitions for the repellent term, one of which may be pertinent: “A rock, stone, or boulder, esp one dark in color.”)
In 1955, Harry E. Fraser, the director of public beaches in the commonwealth’s Department of Public Works, supervised the construction at this spot of an octagonal wooden observation platform on high stilts. Rudimentary it may have been, but the view drew countless visitors and though the lookout tower was well out into the dunes, it stood conveniently at the intersection of what was then known as New Beach Highway (Province Lands Road) and Conwell Street Extension (Race Point Road). Arsonists nearly brought the tower down in 1961, but the fire was spotted fairly quickly at the Race Point Coast Guard Station and guardsmen had just about extinguished the blaze by the time the Provincetown Fire Department arrived on the scene. The Grand View Tower reopened in 1962 but was replaced within a few years by the Visitor Center.
This Grand View should not be confused with Max Bohm’s house of the same name, at 676 Commercial Street.
¶ Republished on 31 December 2023.