Map of Barnstable, Massachusetts in 2026

Barnstable is a town of villages, and if you’re from here you probably say Centerville, Cotuit or Hyannis before you ever say Barnstable. This map prints Iyannough Road, Falmouth Road, Main Street, Cotuit Road, Cranberry Highway and Prospect Street, with Wequaquet Lake, Santuit Pond, Amos Pond, Aunt Bettys Pond, Baxter Neck and Beach Point. Click here to purchase a print of this map for your wall.

Barnstable is the county seat of Barnstable County, about halfway along the arm of Cape Cod.

KNOWOL made this map in 2026 from public survey data, finished with the look of an old atlas. The relief comes from United States Geological Survey elevation data, and the roads and the town line come from the Census Bureau. Barnstable reaches from Cape Cod Bay on the north to Nantucket Sound on the south, and it’s the largest community on the Cape in both land area and population, with 48,916 people at the 2020 census. More than a fifth of its 76.3 square miles is water.

Iyannough’s country

Before the English came, this was the land of the Mattakeese, a Wampanoag group whose sachem, Iyannough, led them from Cummaquid. In 1621, when a boy from the Plymouth colony wandered off and was lost, Iyannough helped find him and welcomed the searchers to a meal, and the Pilgrims’ own account remembered him as gentle and courteous. The village of Hyannis, the Wianno section of Osterville and Iyannough Road, Route 132, are all named for him, and his statue stands on the Hyannis village green. Bartholomew Gosnold was the first European to explore the area, in 1602.

The founding dates depend on the source. The Town of Barnstable’s recorded history, in the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s list, dates European settlement to 1637, and that list says Barnstable was incorporated as a town in 1638. The town page says it was settled in 1638, one of the first towns of the Plymouth Colony, and incorporated on September 4, 1639, the same day as Sandwich and Yarmouth. The Reverend Joseph Hull’s page says he and Thomas Dimmock led the first colonists to Mattakeese in May 1639 and named the town for Barnstaple, in Devon, England. That October the Reverend John Lothrop arrived with families from Scituate, and in December a service of thanksgiving and a feast were held at Hull’s house; the rock Hull preached from still stands along the highway. The house built for Lothrop in 1644 is now part of the Sturgis Library, organized in 1863, which its page calls the oldest building housing a public library in the United States. The town remains part of Barnstable County today, and the state’s list counts it among the communities with a city form of government that still call themselves towns.

The Otis family and the summer people

Two voices of the Revolution grew up here. James Otis Jr., born in West Barnstable in 1725, fought the writs of assistance that let officials search homes without cause, and he’s often credited with the slogan “taxation without representation is tyranny.” His sister, Mercy Otis Warren, born in 1728 while the family lived in Barnstable, wrote poems and plays against royal rule and in 1805 published one of the earliest histories of the American Revolution. Farming, fishing and salt works carried the town at first, and by the end of the 19th century some 804 ships were harbored here. The railroad arrived in 1854, and by the late 1800s summer visitors were coming, among them presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Grover Cleveland. The Kennedy family made Hyannis Port its summer home, and the Kennedy Compound there was President John F. Kennedy’s summer home during his administration. Click here to learn more about the history of Barnstable.

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The Barnstable map as a framed print. Swipe for more.

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Village by village

Start in Centerville, on the town’s south side, first named Chequaquet, “pleasant harbor.” It has its own library, the Centerville Historic District and a historical museum, and it takes in Craigville and Craigville Beach. The composer Amy Beach often spent her summers in Centerville in the 1920s and 1930s. Wequaquet Lake, northwest of Hyannis, covers 654 acres and is also called Chequaquet Lake, Great Pond or Nine Mile Pond; it drains south by the Centerville River, and sea-run alewives and herring come up that river into the lake. To the west, Cotuit, “place of the council,” sits on a peninsula between the Santuit River and Osterville. In 1648 Paupmunnuck and his brother agreed to a sale to Myles Standish of about twenty square miles in what is now southwestern Barnstable, and the price was finally set at one great brass kettle and one broad hoe; the village’s Kettle-Ho restaurant is named for the story. Sampson’s Folly, built around 1793, earned its name for being so grand, with a ballroom upstairs, and the Cotuit Historic District joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. The Cotuit Oyster Company dates to 1837, and its page calls Cotuit oysters the oldest brand name of oyster in the United States. Santuit, the village’s northwestern corner, counts as the westernmost village in the town of Barnstable.

On the north shore, the long dunes of Sandy Neck shelter Barnstable Harbor, with shell middens that go back to the Woodland period. Amos Pond, Aunt Bettys Pond, Baxter Neck and Beach Point are printed on the map too. Then follow Iyannough Road, Falmouth Road, Main Street, Cotuit Road, Cranberry Highway and Prospect Street out toward Cobbs Village and Cotuit Highlands.

This Barnstable map makes a handsome addition to an office, library or den, and it can help teach children the geography and history of the town where James Otis and Mercy Otis Warren grew up. It’s made for people who call Barnstable home, from Centerville to Cotuit, and it shows the town as it looks today. Zoom in on the preview above to explore the details, then click here to get your copy of the Barnstable, Massachusetts map.

Sources

• Barnstable, Massachusetts, Wikipedia
• Iyannough, Wikipedia
• Joseph Hull, Wikipedia
• Sturgis Library, Wikipedia
• James Otis Jr., Wikipedia
• Mercy Otis Warren, Wikipedia
• Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, Wikipedia
• Centerville, Massachusetts, Wikipedia
• Wequaquet Lake, Wikipedia
• Cotuit, Massachusetts, Wikipedia
• Sandy Neck Cultural Resources District, Wikipedia
• City and Town Incorporation and Settlement Dates, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (archived copy)