Cape Cod History

1948: Beach plum growers association forms.

The short uneventful life of the Cape Cod Beach Plum Growers' Association

  The Beach Plums were here to greet the  first settlers, but it wasn't until1948 that the locals got organized, and that only lasted ten years.

This day, sixty years ago, saw the birth of the short-lived Cape Cod Beach Plum Growers' Association.

Picking Beach Plums on Olde Cape Cod

Beach plums were among the first of the New World plants the Colonists saw when they came ashore in the 1600s, but it wasn't until November 17, 1948, that a group gathered in Brewster to form a professional organization.

But ten years later the group disappea red from history. Below is an account of the group while it lasted.

Bertram Tomlinson, the Barnstable (Cape Cod) County agricultural agent, reported in 1948 that the making and selling of beach plum jams and jellies was a sizable commercial activity based mostly on Cape Cod.

The association lasted ten years

In the 1940’s, there was a resurgence of interest in the economic development of the beach plum, according to horticulturist George Graves of Martha's vineyard, Mr. Graves, writing in National Horticultural Magazine in 1944, said enough was known about the plant to "warrant planting Prunus maritima on a considerable scale, and for itself alone, since its fruit flavor is unmatched by that of any other fruit known to the jellymaker or fruit preserver."

Tomlinson and Graves were founding member of the Cape Cod Beach Plum Growers' Association, a group that formed officially on November 17,1948. On that day, fifty beach-plum fans gathered at the Brewster Town Hall to adopt a constitution and elect officers. They voted on a life membership fee of $1, and the topics that most interested them: "pruning, spraying and otherwise caring for existing bushes; learning improved methods; studying modern methods of propagation and planting; and seeking the best
methods of protection from inferior and adulterated beach plum jellies and jams”.

The Cape Cod group held a contest for school children to design a logo for "Pure Beach Plum Products," The Association reports in its BuIIetin #10 of 1958.' "Outstanding designs were received, and prizes were awarded for the best ones which were incorporated into a design."

The Massachusetts Department of Agriculture authorized the Association's seal of guaranteed quality to be used for identifying Fancy Grade Pure Beach Plum products.

The Association started a Registry of Beach Plum Varieties to help continue with the development and propagation of the best-yielding plants. The group proposed, in its Bulletin #10, setting up test plots of the best varieties of beach plums. 

The members even included in this Bulletin a recipe for beach plum jelly.

But for reasons that history does not record, Bulletin #10. is the last known written record of the Cape Cod Beach Plum Growers' Association.