Barnstable, Massachusetts
A Short History of Barnstable
From Wampanoag homeland on the shores of Cape Cod Bay to one of the oldest towns in New England: the county seat of Barnstable County and, in Hyannis, the commercial capital of the Cape.
Before the Town
Long before any English settler arrived, the land between Cape Cod Bay and Nantucket Sound belonged to the Wampanoag, who lived and fished around the place the English would later call Cummaquid. The harbors, marshes, and ponds here had fed Native communities for thousands of years before the town existed.
One of the Cape’s First Towns (1639)
Barnstable was incorporated in 1639, which makes it one of the oldest towns in the entire United States. It took its name from Barnstaple in Devon, England. Early Barnstable lived off farming and the sea, its villages growing up around the harbors and along the old county road you now know as Route 6A.
County Seat
When Barnstable County was created in 1685, the town of Barnstable became its seat of government, and it has never given the role up. The county complex in Barnstable Village grew over the centuries, and the granite Barnstable County Courthouse, built in 1831, still anchors the village as a symbol of the town’s place at the center of the Cape.
Sea, Salt & Cranberries
Through the 1800s Barnstable lived on fishing, coastal trade, salt works, and farming, including the cranberry bogs that became iconic across the region. Its seven villages, Barnstable Village, Centerville, Cotuit, Hyannis, Marstons Mills, Osterville, and West Barnstable, each grew a distinct character that you can still feel today.
Hyannis & the Kennedys
In the 20th century Hyannis became the commercial heart of Cape Cod, a year-round downtown and the launch point for ferries to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. The Kennedy family’s compound in Hyannis Port put the village on the world map. During John F. Kennedy’s presidency it served as a summer White House, and the JFK Hyannis Museum tells that story now.
The Modern Town
In 1989 Barnstable adopted the council-manager charter it still runs on, becoming, in the charter’s own phrase, a “city known as the Town of Barnstable.” It was named an All-America City in 2007. Today it is the largest community on Cape Cod, balancing a booming seasonal economy and year-round neighborhoods against the hard, ongoing pressures of housing, water, and growth that define life on the Cape.
Sources: Town of Barnstable; Barnstable County; U.S. Census Bureau.