[ 9 ] Captain L. D. Baker Plaque

In Town Hall Lobby

Lorenzo Dow Baker was born in Wellfleet in 1840 and attended the Bound Brook Island School until at age ten, he went to sea as a fisherman. As a young man, Captain Baker revolutionized the fruit industry by demonstrating that bananas could be shipped long distances. In his Boston Fruit Company, later absorbed by the United Fruit Company, he combined a fleet of Wellfleet based ships, with a network of Caribbean banana plantations in a successful multinational enterprise.  Later, retired from active shipping, he played an influential role in developing Wellfleet as a summer resort.

This plaque, presented to the town by The United Fruit Company, honors this daring, entrepreneurial, compassionate seaman whose many imaginative enterprises uniquely enriched his hometown.

Captain Baker is buried in Pleasant Hill Cemetery with his wife, Martha Matilda (Hopkins) and their daughter, Martha Alberta.