Thornton W. Burgess Museum, Sandwich

Born in Sandwich in 1874, Thornton W. Burgess wrote more than 170 children's books and 15,000 newspaper stories before he died in 1965 — characters like Peter Cottontail drawn from the ponds and briar patches of his Cape Cod boyhood. The Thornton W. Burgess Museum, housed in an 18th-century house on Shawme Pond once owned by his aunt, closed to the public in 2012. The Society that carries his name operates the Green Briar Nature Center in East Sandwich, where the jam kitchen and the Smiling Pool of his stories remain.