Bartholomew Gosnold named this peninsula in 1602 for what he found in its waters, and the waters never stopped defining what grew here. The Wampanoag stayed year-round on the tidal flats at Wellfleet — the oyster beds that good, that constant. Colonists arrived and named the harbor after London's fish market. Whalers built Federal and Greek Revival houses along Edgartown's crescent waterfront until the village became its own argument for preservation. Sailors on thirty-day deployments off Nantucket learned to weave rattan over wooden molds, and the baskets they made to pass the time became one of the most recognized craft objects in the country. The Chatham Fish Pier opened in 1946 and still works exactly as built — boats out, boats back, seals at the dock. The Atlantic gave this place its livelihood and its shape, and it still shows.
