Cape cod as it once was…

In 1959 the cranberry industry was devastated when the FDA announced that trace amounts of pesticides found in the berries could cause cancer in rats. While Ocean Spray eventually bounced back, that year, nationwide, Americans including First Lady Mamie Eisenhower, served apple sauce on their Thanksgiving tables and many growers divested in the crop. That is when 60 acres in Yarmouth Port known as Simpkins Bog went on the market and was purchased by Jacki Rivero’s grandmother Olga DiTiberio for $5000.

Olga and her husband Jerome Ditiberio lived in Wellesley at the time. Jerome worked in maintenance at the esteemed women’s college where he was so well regarded for his gardening skills the renowned botanist Luther Burbank consulted with him as he experimented with grafting.

“He was the one they turned to,” said Jacki, “figuring if anyone could make things grow he could.”

The strongly matriarchal family was led by Olga, a seamstress who counted the wives of several Red Sox players among her high-end clients and managed the family’s financial affairs like an investment banker. When she purchased the Cape Cod property Jerome’s health was failing but she knew the opportunity to work in the gardens at Simpkins Bog would give him joy and peace in his final days. And judging from a sweet albeit aging photo on the shelf in the Yarmouth Port farmhouse, it did. In the picture a toddler Jacki is wearing a blue cardigan, her blonde wispy hair dashing over her brow, leaning into a box of cranberries perched on the bog. Her granddad who died shortly after the photo was taken, is towering over, smiling down on her.

“This land was my refuge, retreat, escape, and just a place where a kid could let her imagination run wild,” said Jacki recalling her idyllic childhood on the land she explored with her dog and where her uncle Emmanuel DiTiberio collected old cars. He repurposed an old English hackney into a “bog buggy” and would delight little Jacki bumping down the trails around the bogs.

The trails are mostly overgrown now but were still passable on a recent misty morning.

“Right there,” Jacki pointed into the forested wetland surrounded by the neatly cut furrows that once irrigated the bogs now filling with skunk cabbage. “That is where the photo was taken.”

In May Jacki made the second of three planned donations, 9.12 acres, of her Yarmouth Port land to the Native Land Conservancy which will ultimately amount to about 25 acres by 2028. In 2020 she made the first donation of 10.8 acres. Of the original 60 acres 20 was taken in a land grab by a developer. By the time it was realized there were already foundations poured and Olga had to recover the value of the land from the residents.

“It was just like the wild west,” said Jacki, “Only with different accents.”

 Another 10 acres was taken by eminent domain by the town to serve the Water District.

Jacki plans to live out her days in the farmhouse on the remaining 5 acres.

“I love this land and I want it preserved. This is what the Cape looked like when I was growing up. Now, when I die, there will be one little piece of it that will still look like Cape Cod.”

Raised and educated in Plainville, CT Jacki has always considered Simkins Bog her home.

“Any chance we could we came up here,” she said, “we spent all summer here, we spent all the holidays here.”

It is thanks to the stubborn conviction of Olga who declined many lucrative offers from developers that most of the land is still in the family today.

“My grandmother was routinely asked, what are you gonna do with all this land? And she used to say … look at it.”

After college, Jacki married Martin Rivero and the couple lived in Marin County, California where Jacki worked in IT and Martin was an artist and photographer. He was so prolific he was dubbed the “Photo Yoda” by the prominent San Francisco photographer Adolph Gasser.

In 1995 when Jacki inherited Simpkins Bog from her uncle Emmanuel, Martin was giddy to retire on Cape Cod. They moved there full-time in 2004 but Jacki did not retire herself until 2018 with the hope of spending her golden years with her husband on the bog.  Sadly, Martin became chronically ill making her a widow in 2023 but not before they decided to donate most of the Yarmouth Port land to conservation.  

A black and white photo of Martin is on the shelf next to the one of Jacki and her grandfather. It is in sharp focus, and he is handsome as he smiles out into the living room nostalgically furnished with Olga’s overstuffed chairs perched on ornately carved wooden legs on a braided rug. A picture window floods light into the room and looks out on the land.

“It doesn't look like much… it’s wild,” Jacki said. “Anything that ever grew on the Cape is out there.”

White’s brook meanders through a pine grove now thriving on the land. There’s honeysuckle, blueberries, concord grapes, and yes, even cranberries. It is habitat to wildlife like deer, fox, rabbits, osprey, hawks, and turkeys Jacki has a particular fondness for. Most are feral as a turkey is expected to be but there was one that lingered for an entire season following Jacki around the property like a pet.

Jacki and Martin were conscious of the Wampanoag historical connection to the land.  In his travels Martin had developed a close connection with some Lakota people of South Dakota and had a special interest in the traditions of Eastern Woodlands tribes. Years earlier Jacki recalled arrowheads and a stone circle on the property were investigated by Harvard archeologists who quickly made off with any evidence.

So, when they approached Mark Robinson at the Cape Compact for advice on donating the land they were happy to be matched with the Native Land Conservancy.

She is now certain the land has been restored to the people who are most entitled to it and will give it the best care.

“People will enjoy it,” she said. “They will walk around and say, this is what the Cape once was.”