Around Cape Cod's High Head

Know your risk at High Head Beach and anywhere else around Cape Cod: October is peak month.

The High Head area in Truro on Cape Cod features various recreational as well as historically and geologically interesting sites. It is accessible via High Head Road and Pigrim Heights Road.

Zooming into bear oak shrub next to Pilgrim Spring Trail

You will find both roads in North Truro on the east side of Route 6.  Driving north, the Pilgrim Heights Road exit comes first. At its end, you will see a pavilion, where the trailheads of the Pilgrim Spring Trail and the Small's Swamp Trail are located. Both trails loop up and down through pine and oak shrub forest to High Head vista points that offer scenic views of the Outer Cape, including salt meadows and a sand dune range, which merges with the Parabolic Dunes landscape to the northwest. 

At High Head Road's dirt parking lot begins (or ends) the Head of the Meadow Bicycle Trail. This paved, two-mile-long, multi-use trail winds along between forested hillsides and marshland to its other access point at Head of the Meadow Road. 

Bike Trail Map at trailhead

 

Head of the Meadow Bicycle Trail

 

From the bicycle trailhead, High Head Road continues as an Off Road Vehicle Route to High Head Beach. A current National Park Oversand Permit is required. The shark warning sign (top picture) at the beginning of the dirt road can't be overlooked. Once in a while, visitors spot a shark. Most certainly, you will be able to watch large numbers of sea birds and seals. You can explore miles and miles of beach sand and ocean surf while walking all the way north to Dune Shacks Beach & Trail—a long stretch where to find intertidal surprises and solitude.

Where there are seals, there may be sharks.

 

 

Big Head/Pilgrim Heights is located on Cape Cod's forearm east of “Province Lands Fist”

 

References and more to explore

Cape Cod trail maps. The second map in the following PDF file shows the bike trail between High Head Rd. and Head of the Meadow Rd.: https://www.capecodbikeguide.com/pdf/cape-cod-provincelands-trail-map.pdf.

Pilgrim Heights and High Head sites - North Truro. National Park Service, Cape Cod. URL: https://www.nps.gov/caco/learn/historyculture/pilgrim-heights-and-high-head-sites-north-truro.htm.  

Head of the Meadow Bike Trail. National Park Service, Cape Cod. URL: https://www.nps.gov/caco/planyourvisit/hombiketrail.htm.

East Harbor (Pilgrim Lake)