Teaticket takes its name from the Wampanoag word "Tataket," meaning roughly "At the principal tidal stream," a place where fresh water springs flowed to the ocean and provided abundant fish. The Wampanoag were the original native people of southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and despite losses from disease and British attacks, they still live in New England and work to keep native traditions alive. The land that became Teaticket Park was first owned by Howard Swift, a large-scale cranberry grower who developed bogs in Teaticket and East Falmouth, including along the Coonamessett River; by 1890 cranberry cultivation was one of the area's leading industries, and in 1895 15,000 barrels shipped out of town, one-tenth of the state's total production. Over time this open land in the center of Teaticket shifted from Native American hunting and fishing grounds to farmland, pasture, a driving range, and finally a public park, while remaining open land for more than a century. In the early 1800s, most local landowners and farmers were Yankees from Falmouth's English colonial tradition, but many of the first Portuguese immigrants arrived aboard whaling vessels in the late 1800s, and by the late 1920s Teaticket was primarily a Portuguese community of tradesmen and small-scale farmers. As roads expanded and automobile travel brought traffic and tourism, farming became less profitable, small businesses grew, rented rooms became motels, and commercial development transformed Main Street, even as traditional Cape values of hard work, self-reliance, and neighborhood cohesiveness remained. Many Portuguese and Cape Verdean immigrants built family farms, and by the 1930s they were growing strawberries on more than 600 acres across 400 small farms; in 1937 pickers harvested 13 million quarts for the Boston market, and the strawberry surpassed the cranberry as Teaticket and East Falmouth's major crop, helping Falmouth earn the title "the strawberry capital of the world." In 1951 Joe and Angie Vieira opened Joe's Driving Range on land in Teaticket, and as commercial development spread around it, the property remained the last large parcel of undeveloped land there. Ownership passed in 2001 to Bill and Donna Vieira, and in 2011 The 300 Committee Land Trust purchased the property to preserve the landscape, creating a public green space that also links Teaticket to its farming heritage.