Cape Cod

Protected since 1961 on the personal initiative of President John F. Kennedy, whose family summered in the area, Cape Cod was the first point in North America where the Mayflower Pilgrims landed in November 1620, weeks before settling for good at nearby Plymouth; it was here that they signed the Mayflower Compact, reckoned one of the earliest documents of self-government in American history. Its sandy beaches and shifting dunes go on eroding and re-forming naturally, with no artificial stabilisation along most of its protected shore.