Wellfleet

Wellfleet is a small town on outer Cape Cod, between Cape Cod Bay and the Atlantic, and the name of the oysters raised in its waters. Each October, the Wellfleet OysterFest fills its downtown, along Main Street, with oysters and other shellfish served by the people who harvest them.

Practical notes

• U.S. Route 6, the main road along the Cape, passes the town.
• The town is small: book a room early for the festival weekend, or look in the neighbouring towns of the outer Cape.

What the Wellfleet OysterFest looks like

The festival is run by the Wellfleet Oyster Alliance, a local organisation that also runs a shell recycling programme, community grants and scholarships. It started in 2001 as a two-day event, and the organisers now count upwards of 20,000 people in the downtown over the weekend. Along Main Street there are raw bars, food stalls, beer and wine gardens, live music, arts and crafts vendors, cooking demonstrations, lectures and a road race.

• The Shuck-Off, held during the festival, is described by the organisers as the biggest oyster shucking competition in America, with cash prizes for the fastest and cleanest shuckers.
• Oysters and other shellfish raised in Wellfleet waters are served by the men and women who grow them.

Wellfleet beyond the oysters

The town sits inside the Cape Cod National Seashore, whose forty miles of beach, marshes, ponds and uplands are managed by the National Park Service from its headquarters at 99 Marconi Site Road, in Wellfleet. The Marconi site remembers the wireless station built here by Guglielmo Marconi: on 18 January 1903 it carried the first public two-way wireless exchange between Europe and America, messages between President Theodore Roosevelt and King Edward VII.