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☀️ The First Civilian Across the Bridge

☀️ The First Civilian Across the Bridge

Plus: The Hadfield Brothers take over East Orleans

Cape Coddah
June 19, 2026

Good morning Cape Cod. Spotted on Reddit: someone asking for the best cinnamon rolls on the Cape, and one local responded with years of personal research backing his answer.

The verdict? Beth's Bakery in Sandwich. With runner ups, Eat Cake for Breakfast and Peterson's Market, and you've got Father's Day breakfast handled.

In this week’s Cape Coddah:

Saving surf clams in N. Truro
Manslaughter charge in overdose deaths
Events and live music

Let’s get to it.

🌊 Saving Sesuit Creek One Plug at a Time

Workers and volunteers just planted 90,000 plugs of smooth cordgrass at Sesuit Creek Marsh in Dennis, one of the biggest salt marsh restoration efforts in state history.

The project is a nearly 20-year effort to save a marsh that's been struggling since the 1950s, when a road cut it in two and choked off the tide it needed to survive. Today, one side looks like a healthy green meadow. The other is dotted with bare patches of mud.

Massachusetts has lost about 41% of its salt marshes over the last 250 years, and these wetlands do a lot. They provide habitat, absorb floodwaters, and store carbon. With rising sea levels accelerating, the team is in a race against time to help this marsh recover before it's gone for good. Read more»

🌁 The First Civilian Across the Bridge

Elaine Young is 100 years old and just bowled two strikes in one day at Ryan's Family Amusements in Buzzards Bay. The Bourne resident is a regular in the senior bowling league, where her caretaker drives her to the lanes, laces her shoes, and hands her a ball each turn.

Young was born in Hyannis before the Bourne and Sagamore bridges even existed, and she still remembers watching the last girder go in. She was even the first civilian to cross the Bourne Bridge, riding in the rumble seat of a car driven by the chief engineer.

After raising three boys and working for the town of Bourne, she lost her husband in 2004 and beat stage four ovarian cancer in 2006. Her secret to longevity? Love, good friends, and a nightly shot of peanut butter whiskey. Read more»

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🐚 The Comeback Crabs of East Harbor

East Harbor in North Truro is now home to a thriving population of horseshoe crabs, marking a remarkable comeback for a 750-acre lagoon that was once so polluted it caused mass fish die-offs.

After a railroad dike cut the harbor off from the ocean back in 1868, the trapped waters stagnated for over a century. In 2002, an 800-foot pipe was installed to bring ocean water back in, and the tides, salinity, and wildlife slowly returned.

Cape Cod National Seashore biologist Sophia Fox now tags about 50 crabs a week during mating season. One day in 2024, they spotted around a thousand crabs in a bedroom-sized stretch of shore. Across Massachusetts, horseshoe crab populations have declined by up to 80% since the 1980s, but East Harbor is bucking the trend.
Read more»

📸 @macs_shack |📍Mac’s Shack, Wellfleet

Tag @thecapecoddah to get your photos in the Coddah!

🤿 Saving the Surf Clams in North Truro

At 93 years old, Parker Small Jr. is on a mission to restore surf clam populations off Cold Storage Beach in Truro. The retired immunologist remembers digging clams there as a kid in the 1930s, the same spot his father once supplied to the family hotel.

Now, Small is teaming up with a commercial clammer to test a new approach. Instead of tossing undersized clams back into deep water where they struggle to reproduce, they want to plant them in dense "spawning sites" in shallow water. The idea, borrowed from a successful quahog restoration project on Long Island, could help rebuild dwindling clam beds.

The Truro Select Board has endorsed the project, and the town is now seeking state approval. Small's grandkids might even mount underwater cameras to track the clams.
Read more»

Chatham is hosting a free trolley tour of five historic sites and museums this Saturday, June 20, with additional one-hour ride-along tours continuing on Mondays and Tuesdays through the end of the month.

Anyang, South Korea native Seojun Oh has taken a winding path from Korean Little League to the Cotuit Kettleers, where the 22-year-old catcher is enjoying Cape Cod's college summer league.

The Brewster Ladies' Library just installed a community refrigerator stocked with free prepared meals and fresh produce that anyone can take, no questions asked, joining a little free pantry already in place at the library's main entrance.

🍽️ The Hadfield Brothers Take Over E. Orleans

The Hadfield brothers are building a culinary empire in East Orleans. Cam and Tyler, who grew up in Harwich, opened The Rail in 2021, then took over the Barley Neck, and now they've added the Polka Dot Panini food truck at Nauset Beach to their lineup.

Tyler runs the kitchen and just rolled out a new summer menu with eclectic touches like Moroccan tagine and Jamaican curry. He's also putting local monkfish on the menu, swapping it in for the cod people assume is from the Cape but is actually imported from Europe.

Both restaurants are the first in Orleans to be officially certified as "ocean-friendly," with composting, water conservation, and eco-friendly takeout. Live music runs Friday and Saturday nights all summer, with brewery samplings on Tuesdays.
Read more»

Emily Blunt gushed about her love for Martha's Vineyard, naming North Tisbury Farm her "happy place" and raving about the Aquinnah cliffs while promoting her new film Disclosure Day with Steven Spielberg.

Nantucket High School graduated 152 students last Friday, with 81% heading to post-secondary education and 27% set to be first-generation college students.

MV towns have officially recognized the Dukes County Sheriff's Office as the island's regional lockup, a move needed to secure state funding for services the office has provided amid budget scrutiny and plans to modernize the aging Edgartown facility.

Nantucket likely won't extend bar closing times this summer despite a new state law allowing it for the World Cup and the country's 250th anniversary, with the Select Board and local bar owners agreeing that "nothing good happens after 1 AM."

This newsletter is free to read, always will be, and it's just me behind the scenes. Reading every local story, writing every summary, hitting send every Friday.

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~Kari

⚖️ Manslaughter Charge in Overdose Deaths

Nearly two years after two young men were found dead at Englewood Beach in Yarmouth, charges have finally been filed.

Cape & Islands District Attorney Robert Galibois announced this week that Malik Franklin, 29, of West Yarmouth has been indicted on felony manslaughter charges in connection with the overdose deaths of Dean Monterio and Lucas Escabi, both 21.

Security footage showed the two men getting into Franklin's car the night of October 27, 2024, taking drugs in the backseat, then collapsing on the ground after exiting the vehicle. Franklin drove off, returned briefly to check on each man, then left again.

Both victims had roots in New Hampshire and were remembered for their warmth, humor, and love of life. Franklin is being held on $100,000 bail until July. Read more»

👋 Meet: Raven
🐾 Labrador Retriever
🎂 2 years old
♀︎ Female
Available to adopt at MSCPA-Cape Cod

SUNDAY - JUNE 21

AK Cody @ CC Winery | 12 PM
Andrew Geano @ Love Farms | 1 PM
Gerry Dineen @ Shipwrecked | 2 PM
Dave Tecce @ Off the Grid | 2:30 PM
Derek Dibbern @ Island Pickle | 3 PM
Bode Corona @ Bad Martha’s | 3 PM
Toast & Jam @ CC MOA | 4 PM
Ted Wyman @ Chapin’s Bayside | 5 PM
Kingfish @ The Woodshed | 5 PM
Mary Mcavoy @ Hooked Bar & Grille | 6 PM
Dave Alves Band @ Love Farms | 6 PM
Kyle Morrison @ Margaritaville | 7 PM
Alec MacGillivaray @ The Woodshed | 9:30 PM

_{Nothing in this section is sponsored. We'll let you know when something's sponsored.}

Friday

78 🌡️ 62 | 🌤️ | 💧 2% | 💨 SW 15 mph

Saturday

78 🌡️ 60 | 🌤️ | 💧 25% | 💨 WNW 12 mph

Sunday

77 🌡️ 61 | 🌤️ | 💧 25% | 💨 SW 8 mph

💧🌡️ Water temperature = 60ºF

25 High Point Drive, Brewster
Asking $2.1M
5 🛏️
3.5 🛁
2,927 sqft
0.9 acre lot

_{Nothing in this section is sponsored. We'll always let you know when something's sponsored.}

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