Braley Jenkins

Braley Jenkins

The large stretch of sand dunes on the harbor side of Sandy Neck, between trails 4 and 5, is known as “Braley’s”.  They once belonged to Braley Jenkins, a West Barnstable farmer who grew pears and cultivated cranberry bogs.  The wild bogs on Sandy Neck intrigued him, and in 1840, when he was 28 years old, Braley began to buy land on the Neck and cultivate the bogs there.  Those bogs were so successful that when ‘cranberry time’ came in late August, local schools closed for five weeks so that children could come and pick, ferried across the harbor in Braley’s large catboat, the Pequod.  Jenkins is credited with introducing Cape Cod cranberries to the general public.  In 1898, after he died, his Sandy Neck property was sold to A.D.Makepeace.  It included over two miles along the bay shore, and supposedly totaled a thousand acres.  Today most of that land belongs to the Town of Barnstable, but the dunes adjacent to his bogs retain his name and memory.

With thanks to Ned Handy and his book, The Little House on Sandy Neck