Town of Truro

Truro retains the wildness of the land that Mayflower Pilgrims fiirst scoured for water in 1620. Seventy percent of Truro's spread of rugged turf and shoreline lies within the bounds of the Cape Cod National Seashore, protected from development. The inland- a strip of terrain from 1-4 miles wide, separating the Atlantic from Cape Cod Bay- is covered with a thick tuft of scrub oak and pitch pine, trees twisted by the winds into ghostly contortions. Truro's major geologic features are the dunes, endlessly shifting mounds of amber sand that lend the landscape the aura of a horizontal mogul run.

In Truro, life happens in the dunes. Austere Yankee cottages seem to rise out of and sink into the land; the two-mile bike path from Head of the Meadow Beaches, in North Truro, follows an intense circuit through stunted trees and salt meadows; Highland Golf Links, the oldest golf course on Cape Cod, occupies a haunting, lumpy acreage with natural sand traps shadowed by the Cape's oldest lighthouse, which continues to trace an hourly arc across the land. Best of all Truro's Atlantic beaches- surely some of the most stunning shoreline on the planet- lie hidden at the bottom of near-vertical cliffs, still relatively undiscovered. At low tide, the strand spreads out into wide, open flats, perfectly still, desolate. At other times, you might catch a glimpse of a windsurfer, or a lone figure in a kayak, or a barefoot fisherman surfcasting for a supper of striped bass or bluefish.

This is a solitary place. Locals- an assortment of carpenters, artists, writers, poets and the occasional telecommutong urban escapee- seem content to drive the fifteen minutes to Provincetown for nightlife and then high-tail it back to the dunes, where old-fashioned New England self-sufficiency reigns. Residents are just as likely to cross paths walking their dogs on the trail to the old Pamet Cranberry Bog as they are in the bar of The Blackfish Restaurant, just across from Truro's tiny town center. And most everyone takes part in running things. The fire department is manned by volunteers, civic matters are decided by a show of hands at town hall meetings, and in the absence of mail delivery and garbage pickup, neighbors do their socializing at the post office and- no kidding- at the dump.

Let us show you why we live in Truro and wouldn't live anywhere else! Come for a visit, stay for a lifetime!