AUGUST 2013

The Last Stand of the Stagecoach

Cape Cod Life  /  August 2013 / ,

Writer: Sara Hoagland Hunter / Photographer: Maddie McNamara 

The Last Stand of the Stagecoach

AUGUST 2013

Cape Cod Life  /  August 2013 / ,

Writer: Sara Hoagland Hunter / Photographer: Maddie McNamara 

Taverns located close to the new train depot, like Dimmick’s, survived the transition to rail travel. Dimmick’s grandfather, who inherited the establishment, insisted on calling it a tearoom. “He was a staunch Methodist,” says Dimmick, “even though receipts show they served Madeira wine.” Former taverns dot the Cape’s landscape from the Old King’s Highway to the Upper Cape, including The Old Yarmouth Inn in Yarmouthport, Liberty Hall in South Dennis, and Newcomb Tavern in Sandwich.

Relics of the horse-drawn era are embedded in Cape Cod’s history.

Photo by Maddie McNamara

Although the stagecoaches did not endure, some enterprising stagecoach owners adapted to the changing landscape and prospered. William Ellis Boyden who had run the Plymouth/Sandwich stagecoach operation for 26 years, repurposed his company to transport goods and mail by stagecoach between the train stations and post offices. The determined entrepreneur, whose beautiful home still stands on Sandwich’s Main Street, also built a block of shops, a casino, and a large stable to house all the old stagecoaches.

With the demise of the stagecoach, Keith Car Works capitalized on Gold Rush fever and the opening of the American West, making heavy-duty covered wagons, shovels, and picks. They would later produce boxcars, becoming the Cape’s largest employer during World War I when, at their peak, they shipped 40,000 freight cars to France. (Perhaps it was prophetic that the last iteration of Keith Car Works was as coffin manufacturer before the rising waters of the new Cape Cod Canal literally put the former factory underwater.)

Standing in the Dimmicks’ 200-year-old barn meticulously restored by craftsman and builder Ben Haywood, the sweet smelling barn with its cedar roof, hay hooks, and perfectly joined floorboards recalls a pastoral era. The prevailing southwest breeze blows through the wide doors, as it did when originally constructed to aid in separating the chaff from the wheat. Dimmick points to the six new support posts and the six originals, complete with teeth marks, perhaps from stagecoach horses long gone.

Dimmick and his wife, Freddie, have put permanent conservation restrictions on their five-acre field through the Bourne Conservation Trust. They have also protected their 15 acres of woods as “current use” conservation land for the whole community.

“You have one opportunity to decide what your property will look like 150 years from now,” Dimmick says. “… it’s not about the monetary value; it’s about saving things for people to enjoy.”

It is also about preserving memories tied to a simpler time, when a trip two towns over meant a long day of travel—but no traffic.

Sara Hoagland Hunter

Sara Hoagland Hunter is a longtime contributor to Cape Cod Life Publications and her articles have covered a visit to the dune shacks at Sandy Neck Beach in West Barnstable as well as a fun feature on seven Cape & Islands country stories. Sara has written ten books for children including her most recent, Every Turtle Counts, which is based on the massive rescue operation of earth’s rarest sea turtles on the shores of Cape Cod which won a Ben Franklin gold award and was named an outstanding classroom science book by the National Science Teachers Association and the Children’s Book Council. Her book The Lighthouse Santa celebrates the Christmas flights of Edward Rowe Snow who dropped presents for 40 years to families safeguarding Cape and Island lighthouses. The Unbreakable Code about the Navajo Code Talkers of WWII earned a Smithsonian award, a Western Writers of America award, and was the Arizona book of the year gifted to each of the state’s 100,000 fourth graders.