Readers may recall this post card image of camping in Popponesset Beach, Mashpee, and recognize the area where my wife’s paternal grandparents started coming to Cape Cod in the 1930s. As shown they camped in tents and family history said they had wooden platforms for their tents.

I recently found another copy of this post card, which is significant for adding a bit of additional information to the story of early times in Popponesset. Norma Armstrong was the person who ran the campground where the East family went in the earliest days of their trips to the Cape. Here is the excerpt from “History of the Popponesset Beach Area” from The Popponesset Beach Association website:

From 1934 until 1939, Norma Armstrong, a nurse, leased the Popponesset shores and operated a tourist camp and small store. Each summer, the area filled with tents and trailers on sites rented for 50 cents a night, or $25 for the season. Old-time vacationers of the 1930’s remember the lines waiting to play the One-arm Bandit for 5 cents in the Armstrong store, as well as the wood-planked roller-skating rink north of the store, close to the present Popponesset Marketplace.

In 1941, Popponesset Beach, Inc., built 50 small cottages for rent at $100 per season or $3 per day per person (children free) as well as 14 cottages for short-term rental, along with a cafeteria capable of serving 2,000 meals daily. Several of Mrs. Armstrong’s tent campers purchased very small plots of land on a strip of property from Roy Wilson, known today as Wilson’s Grove.

This newly acquired card is post marked in 1938 and is from Mrs. Armstrong to one of her renters, a Mrs. Lewis:

It appears that these postcards may have been created and used by Mrs. Armstrong to advertise her campground. The card also confirms the use of wooden floors for the tents, a practice that continued later on Wilson’s grove. Mrs. Armstrong writes “Your floor is built in the place I think you want it to be. We can move it when you get here if it isn’t right.” It is also interesting that the card is dated June 30th, showing that the season was somewhat later than today, perhaps due to the weather being colder on the Cape in the 1930s than it is today, as recounted previously in the saga of “four wool blankets.”