[5][6] Today, nothing remains of the village of Long Point, except for the lighthouse and an earthen mound, the last remnant from the earlier military post.

[9] By an act of Congress on May 18, 1826, the government earmarked $2,500 (roughly $67,000 today[9]) to acquire four acres at the extreme tip of the point, and to construct a lighthouse, which was completed in 1827.

Children who might have been afraid of dogs elsewhere, here ran from the sharks.The village had its own post office, a bakery, boat landings for 20 cod-fishing vessels, breakwaters, and several saltworks with nine windmills that were used to pump seawater into about 7,000 or 8,000 feet (2,100 or 2,400 m) of drying pans.

[13][7][12][14] With low costs and an endless supply of raw materials, the collection of sea salt was extremely profitable in the first part of the 19th century.

The annual output of the saltworks on Long Point reached "five to six hundred hogsheads", or 280,000–336,000 pounds (127–152 metric tons), "of extra quality salt.

For one, the completion of the Erie Canal in 1830 meant a sharp increase in competition from companies that were mining massive salt deposits in Syracuse, New York.

[18] Around that same time, demand for salt-cured fish began to decline, yielding to a growing consumer preference for ice harvesting and storage.

John Atwood Jr., the son of Long Point's founder, boasted that "In 1848 I brought the first mackerel ever received on ice to Boston.

The town was surrounded by water in every direction:[12] Until late in the 19th century, there was not a single road leading in or out of Provincetown – the only way to travel by land to the rest of Cape Cod was to first head north, traversing a series of tall, rolling sand dunes, and to then follow the thin strip of beach along the northern shore line, known as the "backshore".

[8] Beyond the challenges imposed by the occasional drought, however, the residents of Long Point came to recognize the potential for a much greater natural force – one that threatened to impact them with little advance warning.

[25][3] "They say that so gently were these houses eased off that the moving didn't interfere with the housewife cooking her dinner," wrote Mary Heaton Vorse.

[8] A 1942 article in the Cape Cod Standard Times tells the following variation of the story:[27] Perhaps the inhabitants grew tired of sharks sunning themselves on their front lawns, perhaps sea creatures carried off their pet dogs and cats; whatever the reason the citizens of Long Point scheduled a colossal moving day.

The women packed the household possessions in dories, while the men floated the houses and public buildings across a mile of water on casks.

Seeking to correct the lack of fortifications, the U.S. Army surveyed the harbor from 1833 to 1835, and noted that "the point had a large civilian population".

Army documents state that: the point ... was deserted by the time construction of two earthwork [artillery] batteries began in early 1863.

[30] On March 5, 1864, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ceded "an indefinite area (approximately 150 acres)" of Long Point to the United States Government.

Records from this period are scarce, but Army archives indicate that the factory was still operating in the middle of 1883[4] – another source from 1890 states that "John Atwood built a wharf on the north side of the point, which is standing to-day, used by the Cape Cod Oil Works, the only buildings now left excepting the lighthouse.

The mound of earth that formed the foundation of the outer battery appears as none other than a sand dune[37] – no other hint of the early settlement, the military post, nor the oil factory can be found on Long Point today.