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Overview
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Located at the "elbow"
of the Cape, Chatham is famous for its walking main street, a two mile
stretch of boutiques, galleries, and restaurants. Chatham has many miles
of shoreline and some of the Cape's most beautiful harbors. Because it
has so much shoreline on Nantucket Sound, fog can roll in on the prevailing
southwesterly winds when towns to the west are sunny. Warm summer days
with cool summer nights, beautiful warm Indian summers, and relatively
mild winters make Chatham a comfortable place in which to live year-round
or vacation.
Chatham was settled
in 1656 by a handful of Pilgrims, whose surnames still dominate the town's
census list. The town was incorporated in 1712. Originally a farming community,
its inhabitants found deep sea fishing more lucrative, and today small
boat deep sea fishing is an important source of the town's revenue. Covering
an area of approximately seventeen square miles, Chatham is a combination
of past and present: old fashioned and picturesque, yet affording the
best in modern facilities.
The citizens of Chatham
enjoy the special benefits of forward-looking zoning and current planning,
and of both public and private conservation efforts. Property taxes are
reasonable, but town water is expensive. Some of the town is on a public
sewer system, and most of the town has town water. (Narrative in part
courtesy of the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development.)
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