The Great Outsiders: Salt Pond Visitor Center

Documenting the Cape's modernist outpost.

Welcome to the latest entry in a monthly series sharing work from my ongoing project; The Great Outsiders, which explores the forgotten modernist architecture of the US National Parks. Each month, I’ll be sharing stories and images from a location featured in the project. This month is a winter visit to Massachusetts and the Salt Pond visitor center.

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The Salt Pond visitor center was completed in 1965 by the park service’s Eastern Office of Design Construction. Perched above the northern shore of Salt Pond in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the center serves as the gateway to the Cape Cod National Seashore year-round. I visited Salt Pond in December of 2022, spending 3 chilly days in the town of Eastham and staying in an unnervingly empty motel, which I assume gets much busier in the summer months.

The visitor center has a striking modernist design, with a hexagonal roof topping the single story central building and adjoining wings with sweeping, pitched roofs. The building also remains sensitive to the architecture of the local area, utilizing cedar shingle to decorate the roof and facades in a classic Cape Cod style.

I found plenty of interesting angles to photograph and I particularly enjoyed the ends of the wing sections that come to a point and resembles the prow of a ship - another nice nod to the local area.

The boat-like ends of the center's wings.

The building faces southeast which allowed for some incredible morning lighting conditions that really accentuate the modernist form of the center.

I also took a walk around Salt Pond itself to capture the visitor center sitting on the hill overlooking the water. A good amount of the building is covered by the treeline, but I enjoy the way the main section interrupts the natural environment.

I had a great (if cold) time exploring the Salt Pond Visitor Center and see it very much as a compromise between modern and traditional schools of thought. Personally, I would have preferred to see a more radical design (I would have made the whole thing from concrete, obviously) but this way we get an interesting building that doesn’t seem to ruffle too many feathers.

I’ll leave you with a few more images and look forward to sharing another Mission 66 location next month!

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Thank you for reading and I’d love to hear what you think about this structure and Mission 66 in general - let me know in the comments.

Additionally, if you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, please consider telling your friends and/or sharing it on your socials. Any further attention I can bring to this fascinating slice of post-war history is greatly appreciated!

Next time, we’re staying on the east coast, exploring two barge-like structures close to the nation’s capital. See you then!

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For those of you too impatient to wait for next month’s installment, you can skip ahead and take a look at the images of all the locations I’ve documented to date, over on my website.