Nantucket
The former whaling capital 30 miles off Cape Cod
For much of the 18th and early 19th centuries, a sandy island 30 miles (48 km) south of Cape Cod sent whaling ships to every ocean on Earth. Nantucket's captains pursued sperm whales for the oil that lit American and European lamps, and the 1820 sinking of the Nantucket whaler Essex by a whale helped inspire Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. The island is a glacial moraine and outwash plain of about 47.8 square miles (124 km²), low and windswept, with its highest ground at Saul's Hill, just 102 feet (31 m) above the sea.
Prosperity ended quickly. The Great Fire of July 13, 1846, burned about 40 acres of the town, the harbor silted up, and petroleum soon replaced whale oil. That decline froze Nantucket's streets of gray-shingled houses in place, and the whole island was named a National Historic Landmark district in 1966. Its name likely comes from the Wampanoag, who lived here long before English settlers arrived in 1659. The 2020 census counted 14,255 year-round residents, though the summer population swells to roughly 80,000.