Herring Run Visitor Center/Army Corps of Engineers, Opposite Herring Pond Road. Open all year. Features informative displays relating to construction and use of the Cape Cod Canal.

Canal Service Roads (Accesses at Herring Run Visitor Center; Sagamore Recreation Area (Canal Road, Sagamore); Sand Catcher Recreation Area (Coast Guard Road); Sandwich Recreation Area (Freezer Road); Midway Station (Route 6 halfway between the Canal bridges); Bourne Recreation Area (off the Bourne Circle by bridge); Tidal Flats Recreation Area (Bell Road, Bourne), service road open to hike, bike, fish, no motorized vehicles; picnicking; parking at access areas. There is a spectacular 14-mile bicycle loop path along both sides of the Cape Cod Canal which provides level terrain and incredible views of traffic passing through the Canal.

Cape Cod Canal Control Center, Bourne: At the visitor center, one can see the same array of sensors that the marine traffic controllers watch as they control the passage of vessels through the Canal. The readouts include five radar screens, a dozen closed-circuit video cameras and wind and tide sensors. The controller is ensconced at the other end of the Canal, in the Buzzards Bay administration building, where access if often limited for security reasons. A constant parading flotilla of commercial ships and pleasure craft makes up an ever-changing tableau along this 17-mile man-made waterway.

Cape Cod Canal: Myles Standish first proposed digging a canal connecting Cape Cod and Buzzards Bays in 1621 and the Massachusetts Bay Colony considered it again in the 1690s. During the American Revolution, George Washington even had the route surveyed with an eye towards cutting a canal so American ships could evade the British fleet. There was never any doubt about how useful the canal would be. When the Canal finally did finally open in 1914, it trimmed 135 dangerous miles off the sea route between New York and Boston. While cyclists glide down bike paths and anglers cast from its banks, some 20,000 vessels carrying 24 million tons of cargo pass through the Cape Cod Canal annually. Cape Cod Canal visitors center next to the Sandwich Marina on the south side of the Canal provides a nice summary of the project. The first serious attempts at digging a canal began in the 1880s, using the newly invented steam shovel, but those efforts never got more than a few hundred yards from Cape Cod Bay before developers ran out of steam (or money). Finally, New York financier August Perry Belmont had both the will and cash to make it happen. With William Barclay Parsons, fresh from constructing the New York subway system, as his chief engineer, Belmont started digging, cutting, blasting and scooping in 1909. In 1914, the Canal opened to traffic. But Belmont and Parsons’ Canal was only 100 feet wide and 15 feet deep. Stiff current and narrow openings on the drawbridges led most ships’ captains to take their chances on the Cape Cod shoals. The Canal was a money loser, and Belmont gladly sold his franchise to the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1928. The Corps remedied the problems by removing another 30 million cubic yards of earth between 1935 ad 1940 to broaden the Canal to 480 feet and deepen it to 32 feet (minimum) at low tide. During the same period, the Corps built the Sagamore and Bourne highway bridges and the Bourne Railroad Bridge.

At the visitor center, one can see the same array of sensors that the marine traffic controllers watch as they control the passage of vessels through the Canal. The readouts include five radar screens, a dozen closed-circuit video cameras and wind and tide sensors. The controller is ensconced at the other end of the Canal, in the Buzzards Bay administration building, where access if often limited for security reasons. The same controller who controls when and how vessels pass through the Canal also operates the New Bedford Hurricane Barrier, which stretches between New Bedford and Fairhaven harbors about 24 miles west of the Cape Cod Canal via Route 6. Built between 1962 and 1966, the hurricane barrier protects the harbor from devastating large storms, such as the 1938 hurricane. The 9,100-foot line of rocks, the largest man-made stone structure on he east coast, has a 150 foot opening in the middle to allow ships to pass. When the weather whips up and waves begin to rise, the Buzzards Bay controller closes the two 440-ton gates, walling out the sea. The top of the barrier is open from both sides for walking or in-line skating. On the Fairhaven side, there is a small sandy swimming beach and the ruins of a Revolutionary War fort—a scenic picnic spot from which to observe the fishing trawlers come and go.

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