Salt Pond Visitor Center is Cape Cod National Seashore’s year-round visitor facility, with a theater, store, museum, and restrooms. The seashore’s new orientation movie, Standing Bold, plays throughout the day, and other films show on rotation. Films have open captions and assistive listening. Nearby are the popular 1.5-mile Nauset Marsh Trail, the Nauset Bicycle Trail, and the Buttonbush Trail, a .25-mile multi-sensory trail that features a guide rope and text panels printed in large lettering and Braille, as well as discovery activities for children.

In the visitor center lobby, a large map shows Cape Cod’s glacial history, its position in the Gulf of Maine, and the natural forces that continue to shape it. There are expansive views of the Salt Pond and Nauset Marsh. The visitor center museum emphasizes the cultural themes represented on Cape Cod, including the First People–the Wampanoag; European settlement culture; fishing, life-saving, and lighthouses; communication technology; and tourism.

Salt Pond Visitor Center is located at 50 Nauset Road, at the corner of Nauset Road and US-6 in Eastham. Hours: daily 9 am to 5 pm (4:40 from Labor Day to Memorial Day).

Cape Cod is a large peninsula extending 60 miles into the Atlantic Ocean from the coast of Massachusetts. Located on the outer portion of the Cape, Cape Cod National Seashore’s 44,600 acres encompass a rich mosaic of marine, estuarine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems. These systems and their associated habitats reflect the Cape’s glacial origin, dynamic natural processes, and at least 9,000 years of human activity. Geomorphic shoreline change, groundwater fluctuations, tidal dynamics including rising sea level, and atmospheric deposition are among the many physical processes that continue to shape the Seashore’s ecosystems. Marine and estuarine systems include beaches, sand spits, tidal flats, salt marshes, and soft-bottom benthos. Freshwater ecosystems include kettle ponds, vernal pools, sphagnum bogs, and swamps. Terrestrial systems include pitch pine and scrub oak forests, heathlands, dunes, and sandplain grasslands. Many of these habitats are globally uncommon and the species that occupy them are correspondingly rare.