Cape Cod is a well-known region of the state. What is less well-known is her border.
You'd think that border definition wouldn't be a problem for something that is mostly surrounded by water, and that is the case for most of the Cape. Her borders are various sections (Buzzards Bay, Cape Cod Bay, Nantucket Sound, perhaps even the Cape Cod Canal) of the Atlantic Ocean.
The problem comes with the Western border. Bourne, which is east of 99.9% of the USA, is the westernmost part of Barnstable County.
Bourne (and Sandwich) also sit astride the Cape Cod Canal. These towns are concurrently on-Cape and off-Cape. They are also most- but not all- of the battleground in this debate.
"Battleground" is a bit of a stretch for something that even people who are interested in finding out the answer to may not give too much of a damn about, but I have the sportswriter's habit of ascribing military terms to non-military things.
Either way, let's meet the contenders for Cape Cod's western border.
The Cape Cod Canal
This is the quick answer, and perhaps the correct answer. There is no more definitive border than sawing yourself off from the rest of America, and that is what the Canal did to the Cape.
You lose a few villages with this definition, with Buzzards Bay and Sagamore Beach being Bourne's two largest villages (population wise). Sandwich loses a very profitable beach.
This answer is fun in that it sort of treats Sagamore Beach, Bournedale and Buzzards Bay how the Soviet Union used to treat Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. They're buffer states, standing between the Motherland and the western hordes. The hordes will wear themselves out crossing these borderlands.
These villages are fun to tax, they aren't really part of the family, you can walk (or drive tourists) all over them and they don't expect a lot of love in return. They are Bourne's easy girl, which is funny because Bourne is Cape Cod's easy girl.
There is minor talk of these villages seceding, but such talk is usually followed by talk of the necessity of dynamiting those bridges. Cape Codders think of themselves as an island, right? Our other islands do just fine with ferry service.
Buzzards Bay/Bournedale/Sagamore Beach
Again, the buffer zone. If you can be talked into a definition of Cape Cod with a mainland component, this is most likely what you would accept.
The Cape Cod Commission uses this definition, which is also the definition you'd use if your answer was Barnstable County.
Until the Canal was dug, there was no question that these villages were part of Cape Cod. After?
The responsibilities of, uhm, disincluding these villages from Cape Cod involve arguing for their relocation into a different region.
Sagamore Beach is a natural for the South Shore, as is Scusset Beach. Bournedale could be traded to Plymouth for the White Cliffs Country Club. Buzzards Bay would become the eastern border of the South Coast.
If these villages seceded and formed their own town, they would vault to the top of the "Name a town after Tom Brady" rankings.
Plymouth
Plymouth is pushing it a bit, but a case can be made for it.
The Cedarville section of Plymouth was considered to be the cutoff point for Cape Cod for much of history. The pre-Canal cutoff points were the Manomet and Scusset Rivers, a slightly more northern line than the Cape Cod Canal, which takes Southern Plymouth into the equation.
The lakes region here was the most formidable physical barrier in the way of getting to the Cape, with the dense forests that eventually became the Pine Hills and The Ponds Of Plymouth also in the mix.
Cedarville was the setting for
Cape Cod Folks, an 1860s novel. While that author doesn't get the final say, the book's title does show how the area was viewed at the time.
After Cedarville, Massachusetts fattens considerably, and any peninsula arguments weaken.
Wareham
Wareham is the Gateway to Cape Cod. No one argues that. Whether that makes it a part of Cape Cod, that's another story.
Wareham is like Plymouth, in that her eastern lakes region was a natural barrier for Cape Cod before the Canal was dug.
Wareham is also like Plymouth in that it is easy to include Cedarville and Onset as part of Cape Cod, but North Plymouth and West Wareham are a hard sell.
Wareham does have a Cape League team, and, for a long time, you were on Cape Cod once you drove through the Gateway Lighthouses.
Outer Cape = True Cape
If you want to get reallllllllly snobby, you can adopt this definition.
This is both physical and psychological, and proponents for psychological often don't bother to even use the physical in the argument.
Cape Cod is nearly bisected by the Bass River. That's the physical argument.
Much like those aerial shots you see when it is obvious where the Dominican Republic ends and Haiti begins, the Cape changes somewhat once you cross the Bass.
East of the Bass and through the Outer Cape, Cape Cod starts to get a bit more Old School. Towns get smaller, business districts get cozier and the beaches become more dominant.
"When people think of Cape Cod, they're thinking of the Outer Cape," is a prevailing sentiment of those who favor this view. You can get Ed Lambert of WXTK to voice this opinion if the topic comes up.
