Captain Penniman House

The Penniman House is a two-and-a-half-story French Second Empire home at Fort Hill in Eastham, built in 1868 for Captain Edward Penniman and his wife. Its yellow clapboards, red mansard roof, ornate dormers and cupola tell you what to look for before you reach the door. Plan on seeing the exterior: the house is not open for ordinary walk-in visits, though scheduled ranger programs sometimes include the interior. Check the park program schedule before planning around a tour. Turn from Route 6 at the Fort Hill sign onto Governor Prence Road; parking is across from the house. For a photo, keep the cupola and the three roof dormers above the front porch in frame.

The house stands on a raised site. The Pennimans built up the basement and brought in about eight feet of fill, improving drainage and lifting the cupola windows high enough for Edward Penniman to watch ships in Cape Cod Bay and the Atlantic. Look up from the broad mansard roof: the cupola is the feature that turns this large family home into a house with a view of the working sea.

Penniman captained the whaling ship Minerva on a voyage around the world from 1864 to 1868, just before the house was built. A mansard-roofed barn followed in 1880. When ranger programs open the interior, look for details that were advanced for Eastham at the time: a cistern-fed kitchen water system and an indoor bathroom, including what NPS identifies as the town's first flush toilet.

The one-mile Fort Hill loop crosses open fields, connects to Red Maple Swamp Trail and opens onto views of Nauset Marsh. It is rated easy, with a solid surface, some log steps on slopes and about 40 feet of elevation change; allow roughly 30 to 45 minutes. The hill's name remains uncertain: it was the high ground beside a Nauset meetinghouse established after English settlers arrived in 1644, but the idea that it served as a fort is only a possibility. The trail's restroom is at Hemenway Landing, not by the house.

Older pictures show whale jawbones forming an arch at the entrance. The best-known gate, made from finback-whale jawbones and installed in 1969, was removed in 2018 for safety; the bones are now held at Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum. It is a striking part of the property's story, but it is no longer at the house.