Remembering Brewster’s Roadside Attractions

Today’s visitors coming to Brewster for the first time are likely to be struck by the stately homes of ship captains or the natural wonders of the tidal flats or miles of nature trails.

But just a few decades ago, tourism catered to the motoring public. Cape Cod was home to as many as five drive-in theaters, lots of small amusement parks and drive-up restaurants. At one time, driving through Brewster you could see jungle animals, the Chicago Fire, Revolutionary War soldiers and trained dolphins.

Sealand of Cape Cod

In 1966, Dennis residents George “Bob” King and his wife Diane opened Sealand on Route 6A in West Brewster on a marshy plot near Quivett Creek. It started as a small aquarium and eventually became one of the Cape’s pioneering marine mammal rescue centers, with a heavy focus on educating the public about the marine environment. But it was also a real attraction for visitors, featuring resident dolphins, a pair of otters, and — perhaps the star of the show — Dennis the 450-pound sea lion, known for delighting his fans by blowing bubbles.

“All the kids loved him,” said Barbara Rugg of East Harwich, who worked at Sea Land through high school. At its peak, Sealand had dolphins, harbor seals, a large variety of local fish, a nurse shark, snakes, turtles, a piranha and a caiman — a member of the alligator family. His name was Rufus.

“Rufus was very good at escaping his cage,” Rugg recalled with a laugh. There were mammals as well. “I was on the news one time with Humphrey the camel, feeding him Oreo cookies and hoping he didn’t spit on me.”

Basically self-taught, the Kings had good success saving stranded seals, with more than 70 percent able to be returned to the wild, though few rehabilitators at the time had much success with whales and dolphins. Admission to Sealand, $6.25 for adults and $3.95 for children back in 1986, helped subsidize rescues and research efforts. Of the 20 or so staff members they employed each summer, a fair number went on to lead prestigious national aquariums.

“I used to go in and play frisbee with the dolphins before work,” Rugg said. And there was Chris, the Kings’ Samoyed dog, who had a special bond with the seals and sea lions. “He would run away from home and go sit with the seals,” she said.

In 1989, the Kings sold Sealand to a nonprofit group which renovated it for use as an educational facility, but the aquarium closed in 1992, facing money problems. The property was sold in 1998 and is now a private residence, showing few signs of its former use.

Drummer Boy Museum

It’s easier to locate the home of the former Drummer Boy Museum, which occupied land about a mile east on Main Street that was ultimately purchased by the town and renamed Drummer Boy Park. The museum was the creation of Lewis “Tony” McGowan, a Harvard-educated lawyer who sought to create an attraction that appealed to the visitors’ patriotic spirit. It was several years before the nation’s bicentennial, and McGowan commissioned two artists to paint larger-than-life scenes telling the story of the American Revolution.

The murals were housed in a football-field-sized building that rested on the spot now occupied by the playground and portrayed historical events from the Boston Tea Party through to the surrender of British troops at the Battle of Yorktown. Guides were hired to walk visitors through the displays on a 45-minute tour; one of those guides was Sally Cabot Gunning, who was a college student at the time.

“[Tony] introduced me to the ‘other’ history, the one that didn’t make the textbooks,” Gunning said. He taught her that Paul Revere never actually completed his famous ride, and that colonists were very sharply divided on the matter of independence from Britain. “Tony gave me many wonderful books to read and gets some of the credit for turning me into a writer of historical fiction,” she said. Gunning knew some of the museum’s secrets, like the artist who painted one of the reviled Bunker Hill redcoats with the face of Richard Nixon.

“Tony was a strict Republican, but not a Nixon fan — he thought it was great,” she recalled.

The museum opened sometime in the late ‘60s and included a children’s gift shop and a separate souvenir shop for adults where the bandstand now sits. Eventually, McGowan converted that building into a home where he and his wife, Bette, lived. They built a new gift shop to replace it: the building that still stands today.

Though it’s not clear when the museum closed, in 1974 the McGowans generously gave more than an acre of their land to the Brewster Historical Society to provide a new home for the Higgins Farm Windmill and the Harris-Black House. Later, they sold their home and the remaining property to the town at a tiny price to be paid over a decade, providing space for the park. Each week in the summer, the Brewster Band plays patriotic songs there. The historical society has the museum’s signs and old drum, as well as postcards of all the scenes.

“I’m told the paintings are in a museum in Charlestown now,” Gunning said.

Bassett’s Wild Animal Farm

As a child, this reporter remembers visiting another Brewster attraction with his classmates from Cookies Preschool Center around 1975. It was Bassett’s Wild Animal Farm, and visiting kids received an ice cream cone filled with animal feed to dole out at the petting zoo. The goats liked the cone even better than the food.

But Bassett’s was much more than a petting zoo. Namesake Harry “Bud” Bassett opened it in 1959 as Bassett’s Game Farm, charging admission of 50 cents for adults and 30 cents for kids. Among the tall pines that graced the property, visitors would see raccoons, skunks, Canada geese, and eventually a black bear and llamas. Running the farm was a labor of love for Bassett and his wife, Olivia, who were avid animal lovers.

Travel blogger Christopher Setterlund wrote about Bassett’s, which was a mainstay of summer family outings and school trips for decades.

“In the 1970s, a leopard, mountain lion, several coatimundi and a few Patagonian cavies became part of the farm,” Setterlund wrote. “In 1979, after nearly 20 years of sharing his love of animals with Cape Codders, visitors and their families, Bud Bassett decided it was time to sell and retire. He found a buyer in Gail and Donald Smithson, who were looking for a place to begin an Appaloosa horse breeding farm.” But they fell in love with the animals, and kept Bassett’s Wild Animal Farm in operation. Gail Smithson invested in the farm, making renovations and improving cages housing some of the animals. She added Indian zebus, a mountain lion and an African lion, as well as a Bengal tiger cub named Okemo.

The park was closed in 2000 when Okemo bit a 14-year-old employee in the leg, raising scrutiny of the operation. The girl recovered from her injuries, and the animals were relocated to wildlife sanctuaries and other facilities. It was clear that they had been well cared for, officials said.

Gail Smithson passed away earlier this year, and the former farm on Tubman Road has a worthy new purpose: a Habitat for Humanity housing development.

New England Fire and History Museum

Fire buffs — and who isn’t one? — made sure to leave time for the New England Fire and History Museum on Main Street. Occupying five buildings on a two-acre site, the museum was the dream of Gene Morris, a retired executive and D-Day veteran who created it in his home state as the New Jersey Fire Museum in South Orange in 1954. A summer resident of Chatham and Harwich, Morris brought the museum to the Cape when he moved here permanently.

The museum opened in 1973 and admission was $1.75 for adults and 75 cents for children over six. The main exhibit building included two floors of antique fire equipment of various vintages, including manual pumping “tubs” dating back to 1760, a steam-driven Silsby pumper from North Oxford, and a giant Amoskeak pumper that saw action in the Great Boston Fire of 1872. The museum was also a home to newer pumpers, including a 1930 Buffalo from Harwich and Chatham’s Pumper No. 2, the 1931 Maxim that was stationed for years at the Eldredge Garage. Old press clippings indicate that the pumper served the town for a remarkable 39 years, racking up only 8,245 miles on the odometer.

Then there was a collection of fire helmets that formerly belonged to Boston Pops conductor Arthur Fiedler (they’re currently on display at the Boston Fire Museum), collections of toys, uniforms and other equipment.

A centerpiece of the museum was a sweeping diorama of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which gave spectators an aerial view of the blaze as it spread, described by a recorded commentary that noted the official findings of the inquest held after the disaster. Spoiler: It wasn’t sparked by Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. Other buildings on the museum site included a replica of an old-time apothecary shop and a recreation of the fire station that housed Ben Franklin’s Union Fire Company, the first department organized in the colonies.

Mr. Morris died in 2000 at the age of 78, and a small team of volunteers kept the museum operating for several summers after his passing. But its doors closed forever at the end of 2005, with its artifacts finding homes in other museums. The museum organization sold its property to the Latham Centers in 2013 for $1, and construction is underway to build a new community center there for children and adults with disabilities. Latham officials said they planned to dedicate a portion of the new center to the memory of the old fire museum.