A Snow-Dusted Journey Through Historic Route 6A, Sandwich

The winter of 2025 has painted Cape Cod in unexpected white, departing from the usual winter rains that grace our peninsula. This past Monday morning, my wife Lauren, our baby daughter Hallie, and I set out to capture some of Cape Cod’s most iconic summer destinations in their winter dress.

Our carefully laid plans to traverse the entire length of Route 6A, however, met their match in the form of what parents everywhere know as a “diaper emergency.” As we found ourselves conducting an impromptu baby-changing operation in the Sandwich High School parking lot – a twenty-minute adventure that proved new parents really do need that many wipes – we realized that perhaps our daughter had her own ideas about how this day would unfold.

While our expedition was ultimately curtailed by the unpredictable demands of traveling with an infant (and the looming threat of naptime), we decided to explore the treasures in our own backyard. Instead of pushing on to Yarmouth, we discovered something perhaps more precious right next door to our home in Bourne: the quiet beauty of snow-draped Sandwich, where history whispers through the winter stillness. Babies, as it turns out, are the true masters of helping us appreciate what’s been right under our noses and all around us all along.

Scorton Creek: A Silent, Snow-Dusted Marsh

The marsh at Scorton Creek greeted us with a stark winter beauty, its usually verdant grasses now brown and shortened against the winter sky. Snow dusted the distant trees like powdered sugar, while the marsh itself remained relatively bare, stripped clean by the last high tide. The creek flowed unfrozen, its waters dark against the winter-pale landscape, carrying centuries of stories in its current.

The winter silence was broken only by the whisper of wind through the marsh grass and the rippling of water on the muddy marsh banks. It was a sharp contrast to the summer’s vibrant green expanse, yet it held its own austere beauty.

Like the countless salt marshes that dot Cape Cod’s coastline, Scorton Creek is part of a vast network of tidal waterways that help to sustain the region’s unique ecosystem. In winter, it serves as crucial habitat for overwintering waterfowl, while its waters shelter dormant fish and crustaceans beneath the surface.

During the summer, the marsh’s natural channels and pools provide essential nursery grounds for various fish species, including the striped bass which have made this area legendary among local anglers. The nutrient-rich waters of the creek support a complex food web.

For the Wampanoag people, I would imagine that Scorton Creek was a place of sustenance and ceremony. For thousands of years I am sure they must have harvested fish and shellfish from these waters, particularly in spring when the herring would run. Based off my very unofficial online research, the creek’s edges provided natural deposits of clay used for pottery.

When European settlers arrived in the 1600s, they quickly recognized the creek’s value, establishing fishing weirs and using the marsh grass for livestock fodder and roof thatching.

As I rushed to capture a few quick photos before returning to my wife and daughter waiting patiently in the car, I couldn’t help but recall my own history with these waters.

Nearby Scorton Ledge has provided me with fishing memories that I will never forget. Growing up my dad and I would troll tube and worm over the Ledge and it’s where I caught my first “really big” striper.

Fishing the Ledge is a far cry from my hurried photography that morning, but somehow I found myself appreciating the quiet present of the winter marsh, while at the same time reliving those exciting memories of early mornings and late summer nights spent fishing the waters just offshore.

The Snow-Crowned Dunes of Sandy Neck Beach

On Monday the dunes along the barrier beach of Sandy Neck were still blanketed in snow. While Lauren stayed cozy in the car with Hallie, keeping watch over our increasingly sleepy explorer-in-training, I ventured out to take in the view. The bay lay relatively calm despite the light onshore wind, and save for a few dedicated dog walkers, the beach stood empty – a far cry from its summer crowds.

The vastness of the beach in winter speaks to a different kind of solitude. Where summer brings swimmers, off-road vehicles, and beach campers, winter reveals the raw beauty of this barrier beach system.

Sandy Neck is one of Cape Cod’s most significant barrier beach habitats. The diverse landscape, from beach to dunes to maritime forest, supports a rich variety of wildlife throughout the seasons - from shorebirds and waterfowl to the deer, rabbits, and coyotes whose tracks it’s often possible to spot in the winter snow.

The beach’s formation began thousands of years ago, building up gradually as sand deposited by longshore drift created a natural barrier protecting Barnstable Harbor and allowing the marsh to grow. Today, Sandy Neck beach is still growing and pushing eastward. In fact, the lighthouse which used to mark the entrance to Barnstable Harbor is now separated from the inlet by hundreds of yards of dune.

Like many of Cape Cod’s coastal areas, Sandy Neck would have been a valuable resource for the Wampanoag people. I am sure these indigenous Cape Codders gathered beach plums, wild cranberries and other edible plants from the dunes. European settlers later used the beach for grazing livestock and gathering salt hay, establishing the Sandy Neck lighthouse in 1826 to guide mariners through Barnstable Harbor.

My own memories here include encounters with nature’s giants: beached whales, seals asleep on the beach, massive sea turtles just offshore, and even a great white shark that once claimed a striped bass from my line.

The Boardwalk: Ice-Rimmed Planks Above Mill Creek

With my time on this adventure quickly coming to a close, Lauren, Hallie and I pulled into our last stop at Sandwich’s iconic boardwalk. Our visit was brief but poignant, as we raced against our daughter’s impending nap time.

The boardwalk stretched across the winter marsh like a wooden ribbon, its weathered planks now bordered by crystalline ice formations. The structure stood silent above Mill Creek, no longer echoing with the summer sounds of jumping children and laughing families.

This past Monday it was only the seagulls that broke the winter quiet, wheeling above the creek where warm-weather crowds once gathered. The recently rebuilt boardwalk, with its improved railings and sturdy construction, stood in defiance to the steady wind that was picking up across the bay and blowing through the marshland.

Before European settlement, I once again can imagine that this area must have been highly valued by the Wampanoag people for its herring run and abundant supply of shellfish. I would also imagine that the areas skinny creeks would have provided many ideal spots to setup a fish weir. I can only imagine how epic the fishing must have been back then!

After English settlers arrived in 1637, they recognized the creek’s potential for water power, building the grist mill that would give Mill Creek its name. In 1825, Deming Jarves established the Boston & Sandwich Glass Company nearby, where hundreds of skilled glassmakers created world-renowned pressed glass pieces for nearly six decades.

The factory’s location near Mill Creek was strategic - the waterway provided transportation for raw materials and finished products, while the surrounding forests supplied wood to fuel the glass furnaces that burned day and night. Though the factory closed in 1888, countless pieces of Sandwich glass are still treasured today in museums and private collections, testament to the industrial heritage that once thrived near this peaceful boardwalk.

We departed just as our daughter began to yawn, that universal signal of an approaching nap time. The boardwalk would continue its watch over Mill Creek, standing ready for another season of memories, both for year-round residents and summer visitors alike.

Conclusion: A Winter's Tale of Cape Cod

Our abbreviated journey through snowy Sandwich revealed a different side of Cape Cod, one that many summer visitors never experience. The snow-draped landscape of Route 6A told stories that spanned millennia – from the first Wampanoag inhabitants who understood these lands intimately, to the European settlers who established the Cape’s oldest town, to today’s residents and visitors who continue to find solace and beauty in these historic places.

Despite it being the Cape’s “offseason”, the natural world continues its ancient rhythms beneath the snow: tides rise and fall, wildlife adapts to winter’s challenges, and the land itself endures as it has for thousands of years. Each location we visited – Scorton Creek, Sandy Neck Beach, and the Sandwich Boardwalk – serve as a living museum of both natural and human history, their stories written in sand, salt marsh, and wooden planks.

Though our adventure was shortened by the demands of traveling with our infant daughter Hallie, it reminded us that sometimes the most meaningful experiences come not from grand plans, but from embracing the moment and seeing familiar places through new eyes. As we rushed home to make naptime, we carried with us not just photographs, but a deeper appreciation for these places that have drawn people to Cape Cod’s shores through all seasons, for countless generations.

In the end, winter on Old King’s Highway offers its own special magic – a quiet interlude when the Cape’s true character emerges from beneath its summer facade, inviting us to discover its deeper stories, written in snow and ice, marsh grass and sand, and the enduring spirit of the animals and people who call this peninsula home.

Thank you for reading and tight lines!