The ZooQuarium Building on Route 28 Now Holds What Came Up From a 1717 Wreck

In Cat Wilson's memory, the best moment of a birthday at the ZooQuarium came with whiskers. "The highlight of any birthday party was a kiss on the cheek from Willow for the birthday boy or girl," the Cape Country 104 host wrote in 2019, looking back at the West Yarmouth attraction that ran from 1969 until December 2013.

Willow was a sea lion, and Wilson's fondest memory of the place. She was writing for anyone who had spent a childhood on the Cape, and her piece reads like a roll call: the petting zoo, the reptiles, the birds, mostly native species with a few exotic ones mixed in.

And Martin. In Wilson's telling, Martin was a big brown bear, a landmark that tourists and locals alike knew on sight. He was also a statue.

The building where all of that happened is still standing on Route 28. What's inside it now came up from the bottom of the Atlantic.

There's an older piece of paper about that stretch of Route 28.

In October 1983, MIT's Sea Grant program published a guide to marine and coastal resources in Massachusetts. The copy in a NOAA archive includes an entry for the Aqua Circus of Cape Cod, run by Aquarium of Cape Cod Inc., on Route 28 in West Yarmouth. It offered marine mammal demonstrations, local and exotic animals, and a petting zoo. Adults paid $5.50, children under 10 paid $3, and infants under 2 got in free. From late June to Labor Day it stayed open until 9 PM; from Labor Day to mid-November it closed at 5; from mid-November to mid-February it didn't open at all. The listing even states a mission: "To inform the general public in an interesting and entertaining way about the local coastal environment and to demonstrate how some marine mammals think and behave under various conditions." The director was listed as Dennis Markham. Group sales went through Kathleen Snowden.

Was the Aqua Circus the place later called the ZooQuarium? We couldn't find a document that says so. What we found is the same road, the same town and the same director's name. Wilson writes that she interviewed Markham before the ZooQuarium closed, and when it did, the Boston Globe identified him as its longtime operator.

The ZooQuarium closed its doors on Dec. 1, 2013, the Globe reported, describing it as family-owned, and said Markham called closing a difficult decision. Most of the animals went to farms or other animal centers in the Northeast, and two ponies, Calvin and Pumpkin, went to New England Equine Rescue in Newbury.

We couldn't find a record of where Willow went. One more detail from the Globe's story: its headline put the ZooQuarium's run at nearly 50 years. By Wilson's dates, 1969 to 2013, it was 44.

Two years later, the empty building had a new plan. In December 2015, Boston Magazine reported that a museum was coming to the 12,000-square-foot ZooQuarium building. The high ceilings could take a 30-foot-tall replica of a pirate ship.

The ship was the Whydah. The Whydah Pirate Museum opened on Saturday, June 25, 2016, CapeCod.com reported. Its founder was Barry Clifford, the explorer who found the wreck.

By CapeCod.com's 2016 account, the Whydah went down after robbing 54 other ships. The museum tells the rest of the wreck's story briskly. A nor'easter drove the Whydah onto the shoals off Cape Cod on April 26, 1717. Clifford found her in 1984. The museum says its collection is the largest ever recovered from a single pirate shipwreck.

That's the pirate story. The ship had a job before it.

"The Whydah began life as a slave ship," the museum says, right on its homepage. Samuel Bellamy's crew captured her and made her their flagship. The museum's About page lists artifacts from the slave trade alongside the pirate material, early Atlantic maps and 18th-century imagery.

So the building where, in Wilson's memory, a sea lion kissed the birthday kids now holds objects from a ship that began life in the slave trade. The address is the same. What it asks of visitors is very different.

The museum is at 674 Route 28 in West Yarmouth. Its website, checked Oct. 14, lists it as open daily, 10 AM to 4 PM, rain or shine, year-round. An adult ticket is $23 at the door, seniors pay $20, and children 4 and under get in free.

Wilson visited after it opened and wrote that she was still daydreaming about the old ZooQuarium's displays as she walked through.

If someone took you to the ZooQuarium as a kid, take them to 674 Route 28. Neither of you has to remember the same thing.

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