Round Cove is located in the Head of Pleasant Bay. In early records, this beautiful little harbor was once called Short Cove, to distinguish it from Long Cove as the settlers had named the Monomoy River (aka.Muddy Creek).
On the west shore of Round Cove, on the slope between the present Town Landing and now Route 28, once stood a wetu (indian house) of Isaac James, the last indian on the Bay. There is some reports that English speaking Squanto (aka Tisquantum) may have visited Round Cove during his voyages around these parts acting as a pilot and may have guided William Bradford on a corn buying expedition here in 1621.
By the mid 1800's Round Cove was a center of activity. Captain Warren Nickerson's 50-ton "corn-cracker" named the MORNING STAR tied up between trips at his dock on the north side of the Cove, and there was a Saltworks at the channel. The packet carried out the salt, corn and codfish and whatever else the neighbors produced to barter for iron-ware, sugar, spices, rum and tobacco in the coastal marts from Bangor to New York. The stone work part of Capt.Nickerson's dock is still visible at lowtide about 200' east of the boat ramp.
Beginning around 1870, the Bay and Cove served as a convenient anchorage for the larger catboats which often made 10 mile day trip (and sometimes lay-overnight) codfish trips to Crab Ledge. At that time, the inlet entrance channel of the Bay known as "Old Harbor" was just southeast of Strong Island and would remain open for 25 years.
Later the embayment served as safe anchorage for an active fleet of more than fifty skiff fishermen who plyed the extensive quahog beds of Pleasant Bay. These "long-rakers", so called for the long handled basket rakes that they used to dig the hard clams at a depth up to 18' would fill their water jugs at a spring barrel which was placed in the sand just to the east of the town landing, just as the catboat fishermen had done at this same spot through the years. A change in the law regulating shellfishing in 1985, caused a "gold rush" on the harvest of one inch "littlenecks" and by the 1990's commercial shellfishing and the fame of the Pleasant Bay littleneck was all but done.
Cove Run the tidal channel was improved by Fred Crowell, Sr. in the 1930's using a steamshovel and the material added to the dune along the east side of the channel, an area known as Clam Point.
Roger Munsey, the town's first harbormaster, had the concrete bulkhead and ramp built in 1955.
Today Round Cove harbors more than eighty sailboats and powerboats in season, mostly pleasure craft which rarely leave Pleasant Bay and there is a huge waiting list of potential boaters. Although the waters of the Cove still support shellfish, it is choked with macro-algae the result of over nitrophication from leaching septic systems throughout the East Harwich area. This first, stage of eutrophication robs the water column of needed dissolved oxygen burdening all marine fauna.
Bibliography The Bay as I see It by W. Sears Nickerson published 1981, (page 31,32); A History of Harwich Mass 1620-1800 by Josiah Paine (pub.1937 Indian notes)
