Wrong Beach, Right People

The Pilgrims who reached Plymouth in 1620 were aiming for the mouth of the Hudson River. Atlantic storms shoved them 250 miles off course to the tip of Cape Cod. They had no legal charter for this land, no houses, and winter was already closing in around them.

Unlike Jamestown's gold-seekers, the Pilgrims arrived with whole families, real farming skills, and no homeland to return to as religious exiles. Facing land they had no right to settle, the men signed the Mayflower Compact — a pledge to govern themselves by majority rule. It became the first written framework of self-government in the colonies.