Victorian Onset

Once a Seaside Secret, now a Cape Cod Oasis. From the Kennedy family to Big Bands such as Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington, Onset has always drawn prominent businessmen, artists, and lovers of the seashore.

Part of the attraction is a bevy of Victorian homes, lining the shore, perched along Onset Boulevard, and built by the East Coast's power elite. Also attracted were unscrupulous rumrunners, creating their own form of commerce during the prohibition era. Onset's pier, built in 1877, was perfect for these nefarious purveyors to disembark and hide their wares on nearby Wicket Island and Onset Island. Adding to the intrigue, legend has it that buried pirate treasure lurks somewhere on Onset Island.

Like much of Massachusetts, Onset began with a transaction between the Pilgrims and the American Indians. In 1666, the settlers of Plimoth Plantation purchased over 8,000 acres of land from the Wompanoag Indian tribe, and named the plantation Agawam, which translated from the Algonquin dialect meant: "The Sandy Landing Place", an appropriate nomenclature.

Over the years, the village assumed many names, from "Old Pan" (after the large evaporation pans used in the manufacture of salt) to the more flattering "Pine Point" (after a grove of majestic oaks and pines which grew to the very edge of the high bluffs.) In the 1870s, the era of Emerson and the transcendentalists of Brook Farm made summer seaside holidays and spiritual "camp meetings" quite fashionable. Drawn by the natural beauty of the Onset Village area, a group of enlightened, spiritual Boston businessmen purchased 150 acres of land for campgrounds and established the Onset Bay Grove Association. The association soon developed streets and parks and sold lots for summer residences.

Over the next decade, fashionable seaside resort hotels sprang along the sandy bluffs and hundreds of summer cottages dotted the landscape. Fueling this growth in 1848, The Old Colony Railroad ran a line, exclusively for the Onset Bay Grove Association, and businesses, which catered to an expanding influx of tourists and residents. Onset Village had become one of the most fashionable, well-known resorts of the time. Today, the Onset Village Association, like its predecessors, busily plans a variety of events for the entire family.