After decades of decorous skinny-dipping at remote Seashore beaches, in 1973 more people started baring all in more public places - and it continues to this day, albeit in a far more subdued way.

This is the third day of a four-day series of stories, photos, videos and interactives that examine the Cape Cod National Seashore as it turns 50 years old. The Times worked in conjunction with WCAI, the Cape and Islands NPR radio station, on the series. TRURO – In 1973, the Vietnam War was winding down. The Watergate hearings began a year before President Richard Nixon's resignation. The oil embargo sent U.S. gasoline prices skyrocketing. And, believe it or not, the Cape Cod National Seashore and a growing number of rebellious nude beachgoers were about to make national news. After decades of decorous skinny-dipping at remote Seashore beaches, in 1973 more people started baring all in more public places. Complaints about illegal parking and trampled dunes near Ballston Beach in Truro led, in 1975, to the National Park Service's first anti-nudity park regulation. On Cape Cod, the new regulation sparked protests on Seashore beaches for the next three summers and a federal lawsuit argued by constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz. Upheld in court, the regulation is still on the books. In 1973, the place to go for a quick, naked dip was Brush Hollow, the stretch of Atlantic beach about a mile south of Ballston. Brush Hollow had no toilets, trash cans or parking lot. So, when the dozen or so nude bathers mushroomed into several hundred, cars clogged Collins Road and South and North Pamet roads. Beachgoers walked across private property, littered and knocked on doors to use bathrooms – or did their business wherever. “There was a little path off North Pamet Road that took you right to the beach,” recalled former Seashore ranger Roger Hagen, who now manages the park at the Cape Cod Canal for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “You could hardly move down North Pamet Road. There were new paths through the dunes.” The New York Times, Time and Newsweek featured the controversy. Such publicity “gave the whole phenomenon a major boost,” said Ansel Chaplin, the Truro lawyer who then was representing the Truro Neighborhood Association that sought the ban. On Aug. 25, 1974, Brush Hollow drew 1,200 nude beachgoers, according to a Seashore report. People warned that more might come and that nudity could spread to Wellfleet, according to Times archives. “This does have the potential for a Woodstock at any point this summer,” Chaplin told the Cape Cod Times in 1975. William Falconer of Ludlow, a regular to Cape beaches – both nude and clothed – for 65 years, thinks the numbers of naked people may have been exaggerated. “If we had 100 to 150 nudists there, that was it. A lot of information was erroneous and has become legend,” he said recently. Nonetheless, local property owners objected to the trespassing and traditional beachgoers complained they suddenly couldn't get to their favorite spots.

Activist Nikki Craft filed a class-action suit in 1984 charging discrimination for rules that allowed only men to go shirt-free on the Cape Cod National Seashore. She and others later withdrew from the suit.

(Cape Cod Times file photo) By late 1974, the Truro Neighborhood Association and other Truro property owners had convinced the Seashore to ban nudity. The ban became official on May 19, 1975. That year, rangers issued 625 warnings and 13 citations, followed by 153 citations in 1976 and 139 in 1977. In 1975, the Cape ban drew a lawsuit, filed by the Massachusetts Civil Liberties Union and 12 local plaintiffs, in U.S. District Court in Boston. Dershowitz, a Truro summer renter, and Jeanne Ball, both faculty members at the Harvard Law School and both volunteers, argued that the ban denied personal liberties and freedoms of expression and association. The Cape Cod ban was one of several nude beach controversies around the country. There were nudity marches at several California beaches and legal clashes in Texas, New York and Florida. In the Cape suit, rangers testified that up to 175 cars at a time crowded the roads near Brush Hollow in 1974. They counted 1,248 cars between Aug. 15 and Sept. 1 that year. Just control the parking and all problems would be eliminated, Dershowitz told a Cape Cod Times reporter in summer 1975. If, instead of nudists, “there were black people congregating on that beach, no one would dare ban black people there. They'd just solve the related problems,” he said. He didn't win that point with the judge. In a 1975 ruling and a 1976 appeal, federal judges said there was no fundamental right to bathe nude at Brush Hollow Beach, and the government had legitimate traffic and environmental concerns. Before making his 1975 ruling, Judge Frank Freedman was driven along the Outer Cape shore, Chaplin said. “I always felt that was what won the case,” he said. “He realized what an extraordinary asset the outer beach is and how basically undeveloped it is.” After the Seashore ban was upheld, the local controversy began to subside but never went totally away. In 1976, Cape protests were part of a national “Free the Beaches” movement, created, in part, in response to the park service's announced plans for anti-nudity regulations for all seashores and lakes. By 1978, those plans had evaporated. Summer resident Lee Baxandall of Truro organized “nude-ins” in 1975 and 1976 in favor of a Seashore clothing-optional beach and sent a petition with 3,000 signatures to the National Park Service. The request was denied in 1977, in part because it could lead to a demand for similar beaches everywhere in the national park system, a spokesman said. Baxandall died in 2008, leaving behind the national Naturist Society and a guide to nude beaches around the world. Nudity in the Seashore has bounced back into Cape news at least twice. Interactive: National Seashore Timeline The Cape Cod National Seashore's first 50 years has a rich history since its creation in 1961. | Check out this interactive timeline Activist Nikki Craft was arrested in 1984 for refusing to put on her top when ordered by rangers, part of her “shirt-free rights” campaign. She and others filed a class action suit saying it was discriminatory to allow men to go shirt-free but to fine women for doing the same. They later withdrew from the suit in a dispute over tactics. Provincetown's Spaghetti Strip, established on a 23-by-40-foot town-owned beach surrounded by the Seashore, was shut down to nudity in 2001 when neighbors complained. The Cape Cod National Seashore is still the only federal park with an anti-nudity regulation, Acting Chief Ranger Craig Thatcher said. Enforcing the ban is “something we prioritize,” he said. Citations, which are $100, have dropped to an estimated 80 a year with a higher number of warnings, he said. Most nude activity is now at Herring Cove Beach South in Provincetown and near Ballston Beach, with little to none in or south of Wellfleet, he said. These days nude beachgoers – most likely at those two locations – are accustomed to covering up as rangers approach, several sources said. “It's a matter of being prudent, educating yourself and just trying to have fun,” Falconer said.