Provincetown: Pilgrims Landed Here First

Plymouth rivalry heats up as P-town seeks rightful place in history
By Jen Paton,  Newser User
Posted Nov 22, 2009 12:26 PM CST
Provincetown: Pilgrims Landed Here First
Wearing Pilgrim hats, Springmyer Elementary school Kindergarten students Cameron McWilliam,sing a Thankgiving song, likely oblivious to Provincetown's claims.   (AP Photo/The Cincinnati Enquirer, Ernest Coleman)

Provincetown, Mass., wants you to know: The Pilgrims landed here first. Sure, the fresh water was lacking, the sand not so great for growing things, and the Native Americans were a bit scary, causing them to move a few weeks later to Plymouth—the same Plymouth that gets all the tourist dollars and fame as the place our forefathers supposedly first set foot. This is a situation P-town urgently wants to change, reports the Boston Globe, and it's launched a campaign to restore its deserved glory.

“Support America’s history: It all started here,’’ trumpets the town's slogan. P-town's initiative is one of many that have failed to win it a place in America's hearts and minds, including the construction, 100 years ago, of a granite tower called Pilgrim Monument. In the mid-20th-century, poet Henry Kemp sent little bottles of sand to every state governor with the couplet, “Not on Plymouth Rock but on Provincetown Sand; The Pilgrim Fathers first came to land.’’ This also failed. Nonetheless, claim local officials, “Important things happened here, and we should remember that.’’
(More Thanksgiving stories.)

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