Camp Cachalot Alumni Association Forums

[Dennis Wilkinson]

As I hope you can tell, we've been trying over the last few years to put together a history of Cachalot, and we've made a lot of progress. One of the questions that comes up quite often is why the pond is called "Five Mile". I've heard a lot of explanations:

• we bought the property from "The Five Mile Corporation" and the pond is named after it
  
• because it was five miles away from the old Squirrel's Nest Diner in Wareham, which was at the start of the original entrance road to camp
  
• because it is five miles from Plymouth

and so on.

I can rule out the first two explanations, since I have maps of the area going back to the 1860's, and the pond is still named "Five Mile Pond" on those maps, easily pre-dating both the Five Mile Corporation and the Squirrel's Nest Diner.

The "five miles from Plymouth", or, at least "five miles from something" might hold water, since if you take a compass and draw a circle with a radius of five miles around the pond, it turns out that we're five miles from, well, everything. Wareham, Onset, Plymouth, Route 3, Route 58, the Cape Cod Canal, and more. But that's hardly conclusive.

So, I'm curious: what have you heard the origin of the name is? Post whatever explanations you've heard, even if they've been ruled out (although if you know the explanation to be wrong, you might want to mention that ).
_________________
Dennis
Minister of Propaganda, Webmaestro, and Chief Bottle Washer

"Everything that passes unattempted is impossible." - Stephen R. Donaldson