A Method of Mapping Densities of Population: With Cape Cod as an Example

HE first of the maps presented on page I05 is a conventional population map of Cape Cod in which a symbol for the density covers the whole area of each township. The map is not particularly realistic. Anyone who has visited the region knows that large parts of it are uninhabited. Terminal-moraine ridges run parallel to the north and east shores of the Cape's upper arm -to use a term implying comparison of the Cape to an arm shaking its at the Atlantic. These moraines are wildernesses of burnt-over land covered with scrub oak and stunted pine. Fringing Nantucket Sound is a string of villages, but elsewhere the sandy outwash plains that intervene between the moraines and the sound are thinly peopled, and one often drives for several miles without seeing a house. At the tip end of the Cape the map shows a density of 200 to 500 to the square mile in the fist. As a matter of fact, nearly all the people here live in the compact village of Provincetown along the harbor, and the greater part of the fist consists of sand dunes, where the density actually approaches zero. Most of this tract of dunes is maintained by the state as a reservation known as the Province Lands, where the vegetation is carefully fostered in order to prevent the sands from overwhelming the village. Figure I gives no idea whatever of these local differences.