Built in 1896 in the Victorian architecture. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1975. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“Life Saving Station is a historic maritime rescue station and museum, located at Race Point Beach in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Built in 1897, it was originally located at Nauset Beach near the entrance to Chatham Harbor in Chatham, Massachusetts.”
Wikipedia article Old Harbor U.S. Life Saving Station, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 145 National Register listings in Barnstable County · listed in 1975 · category: Building · built in 1896, Victorian architecture.
National Register reference number.75000159- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Fires near this property
38 since 2003
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 38 fires within 5 miles of Old Harbor U.S. Life Saving Station between
2003 and 2020, burning about 12 acres in total. 2 started naturally. 5 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
16
Arson/incendiarism
5
Equipment and vehicle use
5
Debris and open burning
4
Recreation and ceremony
3
Smoking
2
Natural
2
Power generation/transmission/distribution
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 1,922 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Old Harbor U.S. Life Saving Station between 1819 and
1975: 948 Plantae, 691 Animalia, 164 Fungi, 53 Bacteria, 42 Unrecorded, 24 Chromista. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. B. Seymour, A. Pealey, A. R. Hodgdon and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Chatham, the town this property stands in, in 5 storm reports between 1999 and 2019: 2 flood, 1 heavy rain, 1 flash flood, 1 thunderstorm wind.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
In Chatham, a NWS survey found numerous large trees uprooted, consistent with 90+ mph microburst straight line winds, which is what remained after the Harwich tornado lifted. Two utility poles were leaning on Morris Island Road with one snapped in half and wires hanging low to the ground. A mesonet site reported a gust to 85 mph at 1115 AM EST (1215 PM EDT). Emergency management cited $426,000 in costs for the town to clean debris from roadways. Total damage estimates are much higher, accounting for individual homeowner and business claims.
At 112 AM EST, the Chatham Town Hall basement and parking lot were reported to be flooded. At 300 AM EST, the Automated Surface Observation platform at Chatham Airport reported storm total rainfall of 5.27 inches.
Several roads experienced street flooding, closing the roads. These included: Orleans Road at Frost Fish Road, Stepping Stones at Heritage Lane, Commerce Park South, Main Street near the Chatham Motel, and Route 28 near Stoney Hill Road.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Named in the fire insurance atlases
Sanborn surveyors printed an index of the
town's establishments at the front of each atlas. This property is named in
one, read straight off the scanned sheet.
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Statement of significance
From Monomoy to Provincetown, some forty miles, there remains only the Old Harbor U.S. Life Saving--U.S.C.G. station as the oldest of these buildings remaining on the shores of Cape Cod National Seashore. Today, with the modern Coast Guard and its maritime, seaplane and electronic equipment, this old station is a rare reminder of the days of Sail, the days when shipwrecks were commonplace. (Over 2000 shipwrecks have occurred on this 40-mile, inhospitable beach). Heroism of the highest order was made manifest by the acts of the small crews who manned the surf- boats and set up the elaborate breeches buoy equipment, to save lives in unbelieveably terrible weather. In the first five years of operation, this station's crews rescued 21 persons by surfboat and removed 13 people by breeches buoy.
Old Harbor Station was abandoned February 10, 1947 , and sold as surplus. In retrospect, the old Life Saving Service (which became the Coast Guard in 1915) was the single most important activity on Cape Cod for seventy years--add another 75 years of sea rescue work by the Massachusetts Humane Society, from 1795, and we have over a century and a half of heroism which should not be forgotten. In World War I and II, beach patrols, using these stations, were a vital part of Coast defences. Although Old Harbor station was built at the turn of the century, when new methods were introduced, its historical value, as representative of a vital part of the Cape's past, is obvious. Soon, no Coast Guard buildings will remain.
Nauset Beach, on which the station is located, is subject to very rapid natural erosion. Any moving of the building to a new location on this fragile sandspit will be only a temporary solution to the problem of preserving the structure.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 75000159, 14 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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