Museum Profile
Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Musuem
The Pilgrim Monument was founded in 1892 as the Cape Cod Pilgrim Memorial Association—Cape Cod’s oldest not-for-profit organization. Its purpose is to commemorate the Mayflower Pilgrims’ first landing in the New World in Provincetown, in November 1620. Here the Pilgrims spent 5 weeks meeting the native Wampanoag people, exploring the tip of Cape Cod, before they sailed on to Plymouth. They also drew up and signed the Mayflower Compact, which established the rule of law for the new land.
The Cape Cod Pilgrim Memorial Association built the Pilgrim Monument to honor the Pilgrims’ first landing in Provincetown. President Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone in 1907. In 1910, President William Howard Taft dedicated the finished 252-foot tower. In 1910, the Cape’s first building built to house a museum opened at the base of the monument, to educate the public about Provincetown’s role in Pilgrim history and American history.
Today, millions of visitors and generations of local residents have admired and climbed the 252 foot granite Pilgrim Monument for almost 100 years.
The Provincetown Museum is a charming mix of the old and the new. The permanent exhibits retain the charm of an old-fashioned history museum. Exhibits highlight the arrival of the Mayflower Pilgrims, the early-life of the native Wampanoag people, the town’s rich maritime history, the early days of modern American theater in Provincetown, and the building of the Monument.
