The Forgotten Cape: 1940-1960

Photographs by Richard Cooper Kelsey reveal a bucolic Cape Cod of yesteryear.

In the 1940s through the 1960s, the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce promoted Cape Cod as "an alluring vacationland where the blue begins, and the frets of life cease." At the same time, a young, exuberant man with a camera, Richard Cooper Kelsey, arrived in Chatham. Kelsey began compiling a photographic record of small town life, of Cape Cod tourist landmarks, and the real people of Cape Cod with precision and clarity. He portrayed a Cape Cod of much beauty and charm, an earlier, more youthful time, and a time just within reach of memory. The photographs in The Forgotten Cape: 1940-1960 were culled from the over 7,000 item Kelsey Collection of the Nickerson Room at Wilkens Library, Cape Cod Community College.