Forest To Desert - Provincelands Cape Cod Seashore Visitor Center - Provincetown, MA - Massachusetts Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

Forest To Desert

“The sand is the great enemy here. The tops of the hills were
enclosed and a [sign] put up, forbidding all persons entering
the enclosure, lease their feet should disturb the sand, and
set it a blowing and a sliding.”

Cape Cod
Henry David Thoreau
1865

The pilgrims found this land covered with trees when they arrived here in 1620. What happened to the forest?

In the late 1600s settlers began cutting trees to obtain firewood, sap, in building materials. They allowed cattle and horses to Rome in increasing number, causing damage to the grasses and shrubs. Footsteps cut deep into sandy earth. Soon there was little vegetation to hold the sand in place. The cakes strong winds whipped up the sand into desert like dunes, and the dunes invaded roads and settlements. Today, many dunes are still on the March.

Natural vegetation, if allowed to grow undisturbed, will obtain the dunes. Crassest and small plants will appear first on the sand. Then shrubs will take hold. Eventually, trees will grow and become dominant. Wondering dunes will be transformed into stable, forested hills.

Should we allow forest to reclaim the desert?

(Drawing of grass and its root system)
beach grasses slow down the wind at ground level to prevent seeing grains from blowing Provincetown has been threatened many times by advancing dunes which block roads, engulfed yards, and fishing ponds and codes. The best law to protect dunes vegetation here was passed in 1662, many others followed.

Today dunes can be destabilized by off-road vehicles and foot traffic. You can prevent doing damage by not walking over heels were grasses and other plants for taking hold.