Pilgrim Monument @ Provincetown

The pilgrims from England first made landfall in the America in Provincetown 400 years ago. To commemorate their landings, the Pilgrim Memorial Monument was built between 1907 and 1910, with then President Theodore Roosevelt laying its cornerstone in 1907. The tower itself is about 77 meters tall, and is 106 meters above sea level in view of it being built on a small hill:

At the base of the tower is the town’s museum.

Admission to the tower itself wasn’t free though – an admission charge of USD7 was levied. It was a non-brainer: just about every visitor to Provincetown has climbed the tower, and we weren’t going to be left out. The store below even sells T-shirts for visitors who complete the climb.

As a side note: the noticeboard on display in front of the museum’s entrance states clearly “There is no elevator in the tower.”:)

The museum houses many artifacts from the early settlers of Provincetown. There are more pictures of the museum in the Flickr album.

One particular set of paintings caught my attention: it was a series of five paintings depicting the key events of the Pilgrim landings. Below is a picture of the first event (there are four more such paintings):

Onto the tower itself! While 77 meters doesn’t sound like much, I judge it to be about 12-13 levels high. That’s a view from nearly the top floor downwards, taken with the D300 pointed downwards. The camera strap was coiled twice around my wrist – if the D300 slipped, it would have shattered into a couple million pieces:

The view up top was incredible. It was terrifically windy (you’ll be able to hear it in the video segment below) up top. The view was blocked by glass and iron grills, ostensibly to stop people from taking the fast elevator down, head first.

How did we get such pristine pictures though? Well, the D300 (and Matt’s D90) was stuck through the metal grills, and I turned on Liveview.:)

I managed to get a couple of really nice panoramas from up top, though the view range and number of composite images were limited because of  how little I could turn the D300 in a panorama sweep.

Just to show how tall the tower is, below is a snapshot of Matt going to the ground to get as much of the tower as possible.:)

Videos next. The first one’s a pan around the tower’s base:

Another video showing me struggling up the final steps and emerging at the top of the tower. The color balance on the camcorder’s a bit messed up when I emerged at the top, so I restarted a new clip for the third video below.

And finally, the magnificent view of Provincetown from the top of the tower. Very windy!

Next post: Provincetown’s Commerical Street.:)