Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum Collection

The Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum’s collections include significant furniture, art and decorative objects relating to Provincetown history, and maritime-related items including whaling and fishing tools. There is also a large-scale model of the Mayflower, a natural history exhibit honoring local hero and Arctic explorer Donald MacMillan, a period room display of a whaling captain’s parlor and the living quarters on a whaling ship. In addition there are documents, maps, scrapbooks, photographs, postcards and stereoscopic images. PMPM’s exhibits and programming focus broadly on the history of Provincetown and the Outer Cape.

The Cape Cod Pilgrim Memorial Association, known as the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum (PMPM), is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1892 to build a monument to commemorate the first landing of the Mayflower Pilgrims in 1620 at Provincetown, MA.  PMPM’s mission is to maintain the Pilgrim Monument, grounds and other buildings, and to preserve and present the history of Provincetown and the region. 

In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone for the 252-foot granite monument, which was copied from the Torre Del Mangia in Siena, Italy.  In 1910 President William Taft dedicated the Monument. The current museum, built in 1961, combines the collections of the former Provincetown Historical Museum with its own collections.  The original museum, referred to as “The Lodge,” was designed as the first museum on Cape Cod and built in 1910.

PMPM is open daily from April through November. Visitors come to climb the historic Monument and to learn about the history of Provincetown through exhibits focused on: the arrival of the Mayflower pilgrims and the writing of the Mayflower Compact in Provincetown Harbor; the town’s maritime history; the early days of the modern American theater in Provincetown; and the building of the monument.