MBL Falmouth Forum: “Creating Cape Cod: The Evolution of Tourism” - Jennifer Madden

For more than 30 years, the Falmouth Forum, presented by the Friends of the MBL, has brought free cultural enrichment to our community. This season will feature captivating speakers that will deliver powerful talks with a wide range of subjects.

“Creating Cape Cod: The Evolution of Tourism” - Jennifer Madden, Director of Collections & Exhibitions, Heritage Museums & Gardens

Today, few topics on Cape Cod are more controversial than tourism. Both a blessing and a curse, tourism simultaneously powers a humming economy and tightens the stranglehold on the region’s limited resources.

But the Cape wasn’t always known as a place people wanted to visit. Between 1860 and 1900, the region experienced a lingering depression as traditional industries faltered and residents moved away. In the 1850s, Henry David Thoreau described the Cape as a “Yankee backwater,” and most everyone agreed.
 
The Cape’s emerging tourist industry began slowly after the Civil War, picked up speed with the advent of the railroad, but didn’t really take off until the widespread adoption of the automobile. Once people could easily travel to and around the Cape, many discovered its seaside charms. Consequently, Cape Cod has been experiencing a tourist boom for more than 100 years now.
 
Jennifer Madden is the Director of Collections & Exhibitions at Heritage Museums & Gardens, where she has worked since 1993. Her duties include organizing the exhibitions presented at Heritage each year and supervising the care and conservation of all objects in the museum’s collection. Since she began her employment with the museum, Ms. Madden has curated over 150 exhibitions and published three exhibit catalogs. She earned a BA in Anthropology with a minor in Museum Studies from Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin, and an MA in History Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program in Cooperstown, New York.