Bourne Identity

From Dave Brigham:

I'll say right up front that this post won't match the headline. Well, not exactly anyway. This is just a little piece about Bourne, Massachusetts, the first town you hit when you go over the Cape Cod Canal on Route 25. It's not an exhaustive review of the backside of this lovely town, nor is it a place where you'll find anything about Matt Damon, Julia Stiles or Walton Goggins. But I'll give you this:

Every summer for the last 14 years my family and I have vacationed in Pocasset, a beautiful little village in Bourne. It's a sleepy place with a few small restaurants, some modest hiking trails and great sunsets over Buzzards Bay. This year, for the first time, I decided to poke around a bit into the underbelly of Pocasset and some other parts of Bourne. Because I was on vacation, I had limited time, so I hardly covered the entire town. But here's a bit of what I found.

The entry gate above says 1896, but PocassetCemetery.org indicates the first burial dates to 1835. The web site is a labor of love, and includes genealogical information about the families buried within.

There are numerous cool gravestones and statues both old and new.

While the newer part of the cemetery is fairly well maintained, the older section could use some tree pruning.

Not everyone, however, has a cool headstone.

After leaving the cemetery, I drove aimlessly around and ended up at the Aptuxcet Trading Post Museum, which is very close to the Cape Cod Canal. I had no interest in the museum, but dug the mural painted on a bridge abutment for the active train tracks near the museum.

The last stop on my short tour was Little Bay hiking trails, which run between Shore Road and Buzzards Bay. The hike isn't much, and there are no old structures that I saw, but I always like it when an active railroad line, albeit a lightly used one that's mostly for trash runs, winds through my world.