Old Harbor Life-Saving Station

Drive to Race Point Beach at the end of Race Point Road and follow the boardwalk from the beach access to the station. It is an easy add-on to a beach day. Seasonal restrooms, showers and changing rooms are at the beach access area, not inside the museum. No food service is confirmed at the station.

Built for the U.S. Life-Saving Service, the station combined crew quarters with a boat room and a four-story lookout tower. The tower let the keeper watch the water for wrecks, and the boat room holds two rescue boats. The museum is furnished to evoke about 1900; a watchman's clock, hand-pump sink and cook stove give the living quarters a useful sense of daily life.

The station was decommissioned in 1944 and sold as surplus three years later. It became a private residence for about 26 years, but erosion was bringing the original Nauset Beach site toward the sea. In 1977, the building was moved by barge to Race Point, where it could be preserved.

The Outer Cape has a long record of wrecks: shifting offshore sandbars and heavy surf contributed to more than 3,000 shipwrecks in 300 years of recorded history. Local lifesaving efforts began before the federal stations, with Massachusetts Humane Society work dating to 1785; the federal service followed in 1872. The station's rescue gear makes more sense once you know how dangerous this stretch of shore could be.

When the building is open, visitors can climb the tower for a view over the beach and dunes. From the boardwalk, step back enough to include the tower and the grass-covered dunes in the same photo; that shows the station in the exposed coastal setting it was built to watch.