The district covers 1,950 acres of land and centers on 19 extant dwellings that have been occupied by American artists and writers from the early 1920s to the present day.

The Wampanoag people inhabited and used all of the lands within the national seashore, including the dunes area, prior to European settlement in the 1600s.

[4] The Massachusetts Humane Society built some of the earliest extant structures in the dunes area in 1872 to house members of the United States Life-Saving Service, whose mission was to assist survivors of shipwrecks.

[5] In 2016, musician and artist Jacob Bannon stayed in one of the dune shacks for seven days painting and recording music, culminating in the release of a book and album both under the name Dunedevil.

Seven of the shacks continue to be used as artists' housing through privately managed residency programs, such as the Provincetown Community Compact and the Peaked Hill Trust.

Peaked Hill Bars refers to one of the nine United States Life-Saving Service stations established on Cape Cod in 1882.