This photograph was taken from the Center Methodist Church steeple in 1899. Provincetown had already reached its 1885 peak of 4480 inhabitants and was the most populous town on Cape Cod. Still, the Boston Traveler would advise in its columns, “No better place exists in which to spend a lazy, quiet vacation.

This was from the book Old Provincetown in Early Photographs by Irma Ruckstuhl, 1987.