Billingsgate Island

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This article is about the former island. For other uses, see Billingsgate.

Billingsgate Island, also sometimes known as Bellingsgate Island, was an island off of Cape Cod in Massachusetts in the United States. Originally settled as a fishing community as part of the town of Wellfleet, Massachusetts, Billingsgate Island was for a long time the site of a lighthouse used as a navigational aid in Cape Cod Bay. It is sometimes known by local historians as the Atlantis of Cape Cod.

At its height in the early 19th century Billingsgate had over thirty homes on the island and later even its own baseball team. The first lighthouse was built in 1822, followed by a second in 1858. By the 1940s the island had been torn apart by coastal erosion; it had been abandoned around the turn of the 20th century, with the last light tower torn down in 1922. Many of the houses on the island were floated across the harbor to Wellfleet on rafts to prevent their loss. The area is now known as Billingsgate Shoal and is visible from mainland Wellfleet at Jeremy Point at low tide; when exposed it is sometimes used as a picnic and shellfishing spot by boaters.