Plymouth, MA Summary

After exploring the shore of Cape Cod from the site of today’s Provincetown, the Pilgrims anchored the Mayflower at Plymouth Bay, an offshoot of Cape Cod Bay, and came ashore in December 1620.

It was the first permanent European settlement in New England.

Almost half of the original 102 Pilgrims who had sailed from Plymouth, England, died during their first winter. Today’s traditional Thanksgiving Day feast recalls the celebration the survivors held in 1621. Plymouth Colony prospered afterwards, and was merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691. The Pilgrims’ landing is commemorated each December 21 during Forefathers’ Day.

Southeast of Boston, Plymouth is a popular tourist destination and a city of 45,600 residents. A major attraction is Plimoth Plantation, a reproduction of the Pilgrims’ village as it appeared in 1627. The plantation is open April through November. Visitors can also tour the Mayflower II, a replica of a seventeenth-century sailing ship.

Burial Hill, the site of a fort built in 1622-23, holds the remains of William Bradford, a Pilgrim leader and Plymouth Colony governor, who died in 1657. Interestingly, Plymouth is also the site of the Cranberry World Visitor Center, which includes working bogs (where the cranberries are grown) and information on the cultivation and use of cranberries.

By car, Plymouth can be reached via Hwy 3 from Boston or Cape Cod. Train and bus service is available from Boston, although the train station in Plymouth is located about 2 miles north of downtown.