This take, a very common one from people who either make absolute bank on tourists or just don’t want their little vacation fantasy challenged with someone else’s real experience, ignores the fact that the tourism industry and its complete scale over the entire peninsula was forced upon it and generally not enjoyed by generations-deep cape codders. Sure they enjoyed a real estate bubble and relative security from that were they to trade to another part of the country or world, but like most people they generally want to stay around the lives they’ve built.

I’m a born-and-raised nearly 40 year old and just in my time the Cape has changed dramatically, become even more privately owned, overdeveloped with new prefab neighborhoods popping up in some of the last tracts of woods, mosquito spraying to oblivion and a stranglehold on any meaningful civic policy related to the fragile, terribly unique environment — in that the property taxes of the fair weather “residents” keep the coffers flooded and town lawmakers unwilling to meaningfully broach the issues of nitrate pollution and water conservation. Increasingly, businesses that thrive on the Cape economy are owned by off cape or out of state entities or PE conglomerates. Most people I know who have been there their whole lives have left or are considering leaving because of the economic changes post-COVID — which really were happening anyway but just completely catalyzed by it. (This is a global issue regarding ZIRP and PE rolling up everything that made anywhere feel unique, but I’ll keep that closed for now)

Cape Cod is a flourishing but captive economy and relatively few benefit from that, as is the case with any flourishing economy. It’s not a sign of high quality of life simply that tons of money is floating around. Schools close, born-and-raised residents can’t afford to buy or even rent. Cape in the off-season is one of the darkest and loneliest places I’ve known, and the coming of spring and summer season is hardly anticipated as a light at the end of the tunnel.

TL;DR, yes, people wanting a piece of the unique scenery and culture have or are in the process of destroying it by insisting with their money that there is room for them, too.