Growing up, when I head "Cape Cod" I immediately thought of a summer trip I took "to the Cape" with my parents; during the trip, we also visited Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island. It was an enjoyable trip, but not one that caused me to ponder the history of Cape Cod in any form - as a teenager, I had other things on my mind!
My youthful distractions aside, Cape Cod has a long and rich history well worth learning about. It's inhabited history dates back thousands of years to the settlements of the Wampanoag, a Native American people who lived there long before the European explorers who ventured to the New World came upon the sandy peninsula.
Bartholomew Gosnold is credited with naming Cape Cod in 1602. Gosnold was a British explorer who sited the peninsula and found significant amounts of codfish in the area - coming up with a name for the area was rather easy, if not very literal.
In 1620, the Pilgrims landed at present-day Provincetown at the tip of the Cape, but decided to move across the bay to the west and settle a spot that became the Plymouth Colony.
in April 1952 - before my time - Senator Leverett Saltonstall (R-MA) introduced a bill that called for a commemorative half dollar "in commemoration of the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the discovery and naming of Cape Cod, Massachusetts." (I'll grant the naming credit to Gosnold, but not the "discovery" - IMO, you can't "discover" a place where people had lived for thousands of years!) The bill was referred to the Committee on Banking and Currency. Curiously, per local newspaper accounts, Senator Saltonstall expressed his doubts regarding the bill's passage.
The bill was a bit open-ended or TBD-ish. While it did specify that the coins were to "bear the date 1952" and that only the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce could place orders for them, it did not specify how many coins could be struck or when coining authority would expire. It also did not specifically state that the coins needed to be struck at a single Mint facility, opening the way for a potential P/D/S three-coin scenario. Presumably, all such issues would be finalized in Committee.
The Committee, however, did not take action on the bill and it was never reported out - there would be no Cape Cod half dollar struck! Senator Salonstall also attempted to get a series of commemorative stamps issued by the US Post Office; his stamp effort also failed to gain support.
A nice, full history of Cape Cod can be found here:
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The Rich History of Cape CodFor other of my posts about commemorative coins and medals, including other What If? stories, see:
Commems Collection.
Posted 06/02/2022 11:03 am
