French Cable Station

The attack on Orleans was a naval and air action during World War I on 21 July 1918 when a German submarine fired on a small convoy of barges led by a tugboat off Orleans, Massachusetts, on the eastern coast of the Cape Cod peninsula. Several shells fired during the engagement likely missed their intended maritime or aircraft targets and fell to earth in the area around Orleans, giving the impression of a deliberate attack on the town.

Orleans ( or-LEENZ) is a town in Barnstable County, Massachusetts situated along Cape Cod. The population was 6,307 at the 2020 census.For geographic and demographic information on the census-designated place Orleans, please see the article Orleans (CDP), Massachusetts.

Orleans station was a train station in Orleans, Massachusetts. It was built by the Old Colony Railroad in 1865 when the rail line was extended from Yarmouth to Orleans. The original station was replaced by a newer station around 1890. Passenger service to this station ended in the late 1930s when the New Haven Railroad discontinued scheduled service between Yarmouth and Provincetown.

Eldredge Park is a baseball venue in Orleans, Massachusetts, home to the Orleans Firebirds of the Cape Cod Baseball League (CCBL). The ballpark is located adjacent to Nauset Regional Middle School along Massachusetts Route 28. It features the deepest centerfield in the Cape League at 434 feet, a bandstand just beyond the right-centerfield fence, and a playground beyond the left-centerfield fence. Fans on blankets and beach chairs take in the action from the grassy terraced hillside that runs the entire length of the first base side of the field. The oldest park in the Cape League, Eldredge Park opened in 1913, just one year after Fenway Park. The land for the park was donated to the town of Orleans by baseball enthusiast Louis Winslow "Win" Eldredge, “in consideration of [his] affection for and interest in the young people of Orleans and [his] desire to provide a playground for them.” The park quickly became a popular community gathering place. Thanks to the nearby transatlantic telegraph cable station, fans at Eldredge were among the first Americans to receive the news that Charles Lindbergh had touched down safely in Paris.The original configuration of Eldredge Park located home plate in what is today its left-field corner. After generations of batters struggled to hit against the visual backdrop of a setting sun, the configuration was changed in the mid-1960s. The newly-reconfigured park opened for the 1967 CCBL all-star game, a game attended by Massachusetts Governor John Volpe, who lauded Eldredge as the finest community field in New England.Additional improvements continued to be made to Eldredge, as when lights were added in 1979. The hillside was terraced in 1985 and 1986, and has become the preferred vantage point of the home fans. The press box, called the "Bird's Nest", originally constructed in 1981, was rebuilt in 2003. In 2010-2011 a grant from the Yawkey Foundation allowed for other major improvements such as a brick backstop, new dugouts and bullpens, fan-protective netting, and new infield turf. In 2019, artist Gwen Marcus' sculpture The Catch, which depicts a young ballplayer reaching to catch a baseball, was dedicated and installed on the hill behind home plate.Eldredge Park has been described as "a Norman Rockwell painting come to life," and "a sylvan setting so transcendently beautiful one's breath is swept away." The park has been pictured in Sports Illustrated, and has been ranked by Baseball America as the top summer collegiate ballpark in the nation. A two-page photo spread of Eldredge Park by renowned photographer Joel Meyerowitz was featured in the photographic essay Baseball in America. The image is of a hazy evening at Eldredge Park with sun setting over the bandstand in the distance; in the foreground, fans in beach chairs take in the game from along the left-field foul line.Eldredge Park hosted the CCBL's annual all-star game and home run derby festivities in 1988, 1989, 1990, 1994, 2004 and 2019, and has seen Orleans claim CCBL championships in 1986, 1993, 2003, and 2005. The ballpark has been the summertime home of dozens of future major leaguers such as Carlton Fisk, Frank Thomas, Mark Teixeira, Nomar Garciaparra, and Marcus Stroman.

Sea Call Farm is a historic farm in Orleans, Massachusetts, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in June 2008.The property was actively farmed by William A. and Bertha Fiske during 1931–1950, after William's retirement from railway employment. It was one of many small market-garden farms in the Barnstable County, but now is "the only surviving agricultural ensemble in Orleans and one of the few in the Cape Cod region. Its significance is enhanced by the extensive collection of diaries, account books, and other papers that detail life on the farm...." It was acquired from the Fiske family by the Town of Orleans in 1987, for conservation.

Orleans is a census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Orleans in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 1,621 at the 2010 census.

Jeremiah's Gutter, also called Jeremy’s Dream was a canal located on the border of Orleans and Eastham, Massachusetts, the first canal to cut across the peninsula of Cape Cod. It connected Cape Cod Bay in the west to the Atlantic Ocean in the east. It was active for over 100 years, although it gradually fell out of use and was replaced by the Cape Cod Canal.

The Universalist Society Meetinghouse is an historic Greek Revival meetinghouse at 3 River Road in Orleans, Massachusetts. Built in 1834, it was the only Universalist church built in Orleans, and is architecturally a well-preserved local example of Greek Revival architecture. The Meeting House is now the home of the Orleans Historical Society and is known as the Meeting House Museum. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.

The Collins Cottages Historic District is a historic district encompassing a summer cottage resort in southern Eastham, Massachusetts. It consists of a group of small cottages built by Lewis and Bernard Collins in 1928–29 on a parcel of land on the shore of Town Cove, and were typical of a type of accommodation offered to tourists of the time. The property is located northeast of the Orleans rotary, and is accessed via a section of the old state highway. The cottages continue to be operated as summer accommodations by members of the Collins family.The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.

Orleans Cove is the cove in the town of Orleans, Massachusetts Looking for a place to establish a settlement, Samuel de Champlain came ashore at Orleans Cove in 1605. Champlain liked the area, but commented that "too many people already lived there". Champlain went back north, landing in Nova Scotia at an inlet on the south shore of Baie Francaise, which Champlain named Port Royal. Some claim that this was the first permanent French settlement in Canada, although there is some evidence that Breton fishermen had settled in the Newfoundland area by this time. Orleans Cove was the landfall of various French transatlantic telegraph cables. The French Cable Station Museum is just inland from the cove. The French Cable Station Museum houses some of the original equipment used to lay the French transatlantic telegraph cables. The first French cable was laid in 1869 from Le Minou near Brest to St. Pierre and then on to Duxbury. In 1891, the French cables reaching the US were grouped together at the French Cable Station at Orleans Cove. These cables allowed for communication between North America and France.

The Community of Jesus is a charismatic monastic Christian community which is located near Rock Harbor, in Orleans, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod.

Rock Harbor is a man-made harbor on Cape Cod Bay located on the border between Orleans, Massachusetts, and Eastham, Massachusetts. A small commercial and charter fishing fleet docks in the harbor. The harbor is an artificial harbor and is dredged to maintain a depth of 4 feet at low tide.Battle of Rock Harbor (also known as the Battle of Orleans) Rock Harbor was the site of a skirmish during the War of 1812 between British soldiers and local militia December 19, 1814.During the occupation of the British off the coast of Cape Cod, a naval ship by the name of HMS Newscastle ran aground in the Billingsgate Shoal of Wellfleet on December 12, 1814. Equipment was thrown overboard to lighten the load so the ship could get off the shoal. The equipment floated down Cape Cod Bay to Rock Harbor where citizens destroyed some and harbored other items. On December 13 the British sent a vessel to Orleans in an attempt to retrieve the equipment. Finding the sloop Camel that had evaded the British blockade, full of provisions for the militia. The Camel was seized and a prisoner was charged with piloting the boat, but the American ran the boat aground in Wellfleet, where the provisions were re-captured and British soldiers taken prison and sent to Boston. On December 19 the British returned to Orleans and set fire to two boats in Rock Harbor which were extinguished by citizens. A schooner in the harbor, the Betsey, was captured by the British and an American prisoner charged with piloting it to Provincetown. The prisoner ran the seized boat aground at Yarmouth Beach, where the boat was recaptured, and British militia were imprisoned and sent to Salem.