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Currier’s uncle spent the winter creating paths
and tent sites, and in 1954 the family opened
the North of Highland Camping Area. “We’d
get 40 people packed in there on a hot day in
July,” remembers Currier. “We had a little cabin,
and the office was in a separate building.”
Today, the pine trees have outgrown the
telephone poles; the rutted buggy track is
smooth asphalt; and an air-conditioned building
holds both Currier’s house and office. But
the campground is remarkably unchanged.
Families still arrive each year to pitch tents,
cook their meals on small charcoal grills, and
walk a narrow dirt path four-tenths of a mile to
the wide, sandy beach and rolling surf of the
Atlantic Ocean.
The campground sits inside the Cape Cod
National Seashore, authorized by Congress
eight years after the Curriers bought the land
and now one of the National Park System’s
most-visited parks. About four million people
come to this narrow peninsula each year, but
campgrounds are increasingly hard to find.
Rising land values and real estate
taxes have led many owners
to sell for development; even in
a real estate recession, a typical
house lot in Truro runs $350,000.
Steve Currier is not your typical
landowner. Now 65, he still
operates the campground his
father started. “Seventy-five to
80% of our campers are repeat
customers,” says Currier. “One
woman I played with when I
was nine—she’s only missed two
years in 56 years.”
It was people like her that
made Currier determined to
keep the campground going—
even though impending retirement
and lack of interest from
family members in taking over
the business were pressuring him
to sell. The line of potential buyers
for such a choice location was long. “We’ve
been really good neighbors with the national
park for some time, and they were the first ones
I called,” says Currier, who placed that call in
2004. “I really did not want to see everything
we’d done for 50 years end up in house lots.”
The Park Service was eager to deal. “The
long-term protection of this large parcel for a
combination of camping and conservation purposes
made this our highest priority acquisition,”
www.wilderness.org
says CCNS Superintendent George Price. In
fact, Park Service land managers had identified
it as the highest priority for the Northeast.
Unfortunately, park superintendents do not
have money in their budgets to take advantage
of such opportunities. Instead, the Park Service,
U.S. Forest Service, and other federal agencies
that manage the public’s property rely on the
Land and Water Conservation Fund. Created
by Congress in 1965, LWCF receives $900 million
a year from the royalties that oil companies
pay for the chance to drill in offshore waters.
When Congress makes its annual appropriations,
it decides which proposed land acquisitions
will be funded.
To make the case for the campground,
Congressman William Delahunt (D-MA), who
represented the Cape at that time, teamed up
with the late Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA).
“Part of what the National Seashore was about
was creating public access for recreation,” says
Delahunt, who now has a public policy consulting
firm. “You’re on some of the most expen-
© Jerry and Marcy Monkman © Cheryl Currier
sive real estate, right by the ocean. But this is
about continuing a tradition that goes back to
the 1600s, a connection to people living on the
land. Generations of people slept under the
stars here 400 years ago. To cut some wood,
make a fire, walk the beaches, you experience
the full measure of human history. To lose that
would be tragic.”
Obtaining the appropriations usually takes
time—a lot of time, in many cases. To ensure
Sen. Ted Kennedy
(seated) and U.S.
Rep. Delahunt
(to Kennedy’s
left) championed
the funding
needed to save
the campground
from potential
development. It
has been a fixture
on the Cape for
more than half a
century.
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