A few blocks away, the Provincetown Art Association and Museum has used nearly $3 million in grants and loans from the Agriculture Department to add gallery space and renovate a historic sea captain's house. A short drive back down the Cape, the department is financing a new actors theater in Wellfleet and recently awarded a grant to a garden center in Hyannis to build a windmill.

Although Cape Cod is only a short trip from Boston and Providence, Rhode Island, and is home to some of the wealthiest beach towns in the United States, to the Agriculture Department it meets the definition of rural America. That means it qualifies for aid originally intended for farmland and backwoods areas that were isolated and poor, struggling to keep their heads above water.

"Provincetown is many things to many people, and to USDA we're rural," said Keith A. Bergman, the town manager. "We'll take it."