ORLEANS — More than 13,000 herring disregarded pandemic travel advisories and swam and wriggled their way to Pilgrim Lake to spawn this year. “This is the largest run we’ve observed since I’ve been observing, 13 years,” Judy Scanlon told fellow members of the marine and fresh water quality task force July 27. She said herring warden Scott Johnson, who’s been keeping track of them even longer, agreed. “Thi...

ORLEANS — Greetings, Chronicle readers of the year 2070! You have just opened a time capsule that includes this newspaper, which was published on Aug. 6, 2020. Fifty years ago, elementary-age children in the town’s summer recreation program looked to the future and wrote cards and letters about their lives in the midst of a global pandemic, including pictures of themselves and their activities. Perhaps, afte...

NORTH EASTHAM – A surge in COVID-19 numbers on Cape Cod has necessitated another cancellation, this one impacting Nauset Regional High School’s Class of 2020, which had its planned July 28 commencement ceremony called off. In the wake of stories regarding an uptick in new cases following a July 12 party in Chatham that has so far resulted in 13 new COVID-19 cases, Nauset administrators, including Principal Chr...

ORLEANS — At an extraordinary online meeting of the town’s and regional school system’s leadership July 22, Nauset Superintendent Tom Conrad pledged that he and his colleagues will be “good partners and find ways to help each other in terms of saving precious dollars we have coming in from the community.” “We’re anxious to brainstorm with others and find ways to find savings to still serve educational needs ...

On Friday, Gov. Charlie Baker announced a new travel order that requires travelers coming to Massachusetts from most U.S. states to quarantine for 14 days or face fines of up to $500 per day. But with most of this season’s summer visitors to the Lower Cape coming from elsewhere in the state, the economic impact of the new order is expected to be minor. With limited exceptions, the order targets travelers comin...

ORLEANS – Painter Patty Barnes will be Eastwind Gallery’s featured artist through Saturday, Aug. 1 as the gallery presents the first showing of her series “Cape Cod Pandemic Heroes.” The series of oil paintings celebrates brave Cape Codders in many different occupations who have continued to work throughout the COVID-19 crisis. Barnes, who describes herself as primarily a landscape painter and whose work incl...

ORLEANS — Eastham and Orleans continue to struggle to find common ground on how to dredge the clogged-up Nauset Estuary. When it met July 23, the Nauset Estuary Dredging Stakeholder Group found agreement over the area to dredge but not the width of the new channel. “I was under the impression that we kind of sorted this out,” Eastham member and commercial fisherman Jonathan Granlund said, noting previous dis...

ORLEANS — Snow Library has been fighting back against the pandemic with on-line programs and curbside pick-up, the latter just expanded to six days a week. But the global crisis has prompted the state's library commissioners to forgo a new round of planning grants, one of which Snow trustees intended to seek in their effort to expand or build a new library. “We have been told by the Massachusetts Board o...

ORLEANS – For the first time since it was sold by a Monomoyick leader to English colonists in 1711, Sipson Island in Pleasant Bay will officially open for public access on Saturday, July 25. The Sipson Island Trust (SIT) purchased most of the island for conservation in June, culminating a major fundraising campaign led by the Friends of Pleasant Bay and the Compact of Cape Cod Conservation Trusts. Mark Robi...

ORLEANS – With every day the COVID-19 pandemic continues, finding good news can be a challenge, but for small business owners in Orleans, there is hope courtesy of the Small Business Hardship Fund. According to Noëlle Pina, executive director of the Orleans Chamber of Commerce, funds are coming from the Orleans Police Relief Association in order to help small businesses stay afloat during difficult times. ...

ORLEANS – As Maria DeOliveira stared into the hold behind the bow of the US Coast Guard vessel 36500 from its berth at Rock Harbor, she couldn’t hold back her quiet tears. It was aboard this very boat that her father, Aguinol B. DeOliveira, was rescued along with 31 fellow survivors of the famous Pendleton wreck in 1952. Until 2016, DeOliveira, who lives in Dorchester, had no idea the boat was still in existen...

ORLEANS — The Nauset school system has talked the talk, and many members even walked the walk at the well-attended June 5 march in support of Black Lives Matter. Last week, the regional school committee took another step by endorsing an anti-racism resolution being circulated by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees that seeks to ensure “that racist practices are eradicated, and diversity, equity a...