Wellfleet Oyster Beds and Harbor

Diamond Jim Brady, the Gilded Age gourmand, once spit out an oyster at Delmonico's. "That's not a Wellfleet oyster," he said. The harbor has been earning that kind of loyalty for centuries — first from the Native people who stayed year-round for the beds, then from colonists who named the place after London's fish market. The oysters still come from the same tidal flats, briny and cold, twice daily fed by the Atlantic. Go at low tide and watch the shellfishermen work. That's the whole story.