Jeremiah’s Gutter Holds Understated But Important Legacy In Orleans

If you’ve ever driven on or off the Cape, you’ve seen it. The Cape Cod Canal, close to 7.5 miles in length, is as iconic as the massive bridges that arch over it. It’s a welcome sign, a symbol in and of itself that residents and visitors alike have arrived on the peninsula.

 What you might not know is that the world famous canal isn’t the Cape’s first. That unique distinction goes to an easily overlooked waterway snaking through marshland near the Orleans-Eastham border.

 If you blink you might miss Jeremiah’s Gutter, and even then you might not know what you’re looking at. But the original canal, segments of which are visible from the Cape Cod Rail Trail just beyond the Orleans District Court, holds some pretty significant local history. In fact, it was the first body of water connecting Cape Cod Bay to the Atlantic Ocean.

 “The history of the Cape Cod Canal I think is quite well known because it’s still there and people see it whenever they come,” said Ron Petersen, a local historian and former chair of the Orleans Historical Commission. “But Jeremiah’s Gutter, there’s very little physical evidence anymore. From that perspective, it’s not top of mind.”

 Named for Jeremiah Smith, who owned the land through which the original canal traversed, Jeremiah’s Gutter runs a mile and a half in length from Boat Meadow Creek in Eastham out to Town Cove. Sandy Macfarlane, writing for the Cape Codder newspaper, said that the Nauset Indians and the Gosnolds were using what became known as Jeremiah’s Gutter as far back as the early 1600s.

But a heavy storm in April 1717 filled the waterway, noted Arthur Wilson Tarbell in his book “Cape Cod Ahoy! A Travel Book for the Summer Visitor.” With the storm, he said, “nature dug the first Cape Cod Canal at this spot in 1717,” and that “it required a great turnout of people to close it.”

 “The land barrier here is very slight, being both low and narrow, Town Cove on the Atlantic side and the Boat Meadow Creek on the bay side being less than a mile apart,” he wrote. 

A map of the Cape drawn by Captain Cyprian Southack in 1729 shows the canal effectively separating Eastham and points north to Provincetown from the rest of the Cape.

Years prior, Southack, a U.S. Naval captain and cartographer, was given instructions by Massachusetts By Colony Governor Samuel Shute to bring back treasure from the pirate ship Whydah, which sank in a wreck off the shores of Wellfleet in 1717. But he was too late.

 “He came into Cape Cod Bay and he used a small boat to cross Jeremiah’s Gutter to get to the site of the wreck,” Petersen said. “By that time, the local citizens had pretty much cleaned everything out.”

 In later years, the gutter was used by small boats as an alternative to navigating around the tip of the Cape. The shortcut not only saved boaters time, but also allowed them to avoid the treacherous travel that often came from trying to reach the Atlantic by going around the Cape’s tip. 

The canal also was put to good use during times of war. Macfarlane noted in a separate column penned for the Orleans Pond Coalition that during the American Revolution, the British closed off access to the Port of Boston, but ships that were able to “slip out” of the harbor used the canal to access the Atlantic. The canal, which was widened in 1804, was again used to circumvent British blockade during the War of 1812, allowing salt boats access to Cape Cod Bay.

 “The British during the war really socked in the bay and blockaded the whole thing,” Petersen said. “They used [the canal] to get supplies from the Atlantic to the bay.”

 But Tarbell said the money wasn’t available to keep the canal cleared and maintained despite a legislative petition from the canal’s operators. By the mid 1800s, the canal had filled in, and plans for the man-made Cape Cod Canal would soon afterward get underway.

 In addition to nature, Petersen said further development of the Lower Cape also contributed to the demise of the original canal.

 “The Route 6 rotary, the whole Route 6 coming through there, that construction kind of cut it in half basically,” he said. “So it was a combination of the natural disintegration of it and the effects of development as the Cape grew.”

 The Cape Cod Canal as we know it today opened in 1914, and has long since become a local landmark. Jeremiah’s Gutter, meanwhile, exists more as a sleepy historical footnote.

 “All that remains of Jeremiah’s Gutter is an unexceptional brackish water creek surrounded by wetlands and the wet rotary, hidden from view,” Macfarlane wrote in her column for the pond coalition.

But the history of Jeremiah’s Gutter is still preserved. Near the corner of Route 6A and Canal Road, a historic marker stands recognizing the Cape’s first canal. The marker was placed in 1976 by the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission.

 “It’s important to remember these things,” Petersen said. “I think if we don’t recognize our history and acknowledge it, it tends to disappear. I don’t think that does anybody any good.”