Three hundred years after the Pilgrims established the first colony in New England, Plymouth celebrated its tercentenary with a waterfront Pilgrim Pageant that recreated the founding events for audiences of thousands, including the president of the United States.

As the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival approaches, the town is envisioning a much different festive model, built around a series of signature events. Some will take place indoors, and some will have multiple venues connected electronically and with bases in Provincetown and the United Kingdom. Taken together, they express a commemoration of the Pilgrims’ 1620 arrival in Plymouth, rather than the tercentenary’s celebration of the colony’s founders as civic and spiritual models.

In Plymouth, as in the world at large, a lot has changed in 100 years.

The tall red crane on the waterfront today is a hard-to-miss sign that Plymouth is redesigning its town pier in time for its birthday celebration.

But 100 years ago, the physical changes were far more dramatic as the town knocked down and cleared away a dense rank of docks and counting houses from the shoreline, seizing property by eminent domain to “Pilgrimize’’ the shoreline, and creating a visitor-friendly and automobile-friendly open waterfront.

The redevelopment of the old waterfront removed eight commercial wharves from Plymouth Harbor and knocked down the commercial and residential buildings on Water Street near Plymouth Rock and the lower part of Leyden Street (Plymouth’s first street), creating the open park area now called Pilgrim Memorial Park. These changes redefined the waterfront as a tourist destination rather than a working harbor.

The famed McKim, Mead & White architectural firm designed a new neoclassical structure to replace the gothic Billings portico over Plymouth Rock, seen as a shrine for those seeking inspiration from the Pilgrim story.

Today, the physical changes in preparation for Plymouth 400 are likely to pale by comparison. Instead, planners will make use of the global reach of technology to spread the milestone’s meaning abroad.

“All it takes is one compelling message to engage a far broader impact,’’ said Donna Curtin, director of the Pilgrim Hall Museum and a member of Plymouth 400 Inc., the planning body for 2020.

While the tercentenary represented an uncomplicated embrace of the Pilgrims as model founders of a new, freedom-loving nation, Plymouth’s 400th anniversary will address a more complicated narrative, Curtin said, including the history of religion, empire-building, and the Native American story.

“We are looking at the American question. We’re not containing this narrative. We might as well explore where it leads us.’’

Where it may lead is to the evolving discussion of what being an American means. When the Pilgrims arrived, the Wampanoag and other indigenous peoples were the only rooted Americans.

The narrative Plymouth’s 400th plans to explore will differ considerably from the triumphant story the tercentenary celebrated 100 years ago.

Pilgrim Hall Museum’s exhibit of the tercentenary features a 21-foot-long digitally enhanced panoramic photograph of the Pilgrim Pageant’s 1,200 performers — a sizable fraction of the local population of 13,000 — costumed for their roles as Vikings, pirates, Pilgrim men, women, and children, Native Americans, kings, and other historical figures.

As thousands of spectators — President Warren Harding and European dignitaries among them — watched from a grandstand, a broad Europe-oriented theatrical depicted the founding of a colony that would serve as the spiritual birthplace for the mighty English-speaking nation to come.

Locals sewed the costumes. A large orchestra and chorus were recruited; leading composers wrote music for the event. As the Pilgrim Hall Museum’s exhibition notes, the tercentenary event did not raise “challenging issues.’’

“They wanted people to get on the bandwagon, but they never reached out to the local Wampanoag population,’’ said Anne Reilly, one of the exhibit’s curators. “They ignored the fact that the Wampanoag were still here.’’

Today, in a different age, a different century, when not only­ technologies but mindsets have altered the cultural landscape, planners at the state- and town-funded Plymouth 400 are working on a more diverse package of events and outreach that reflects the values of a multicultural and global outlook.

While Pilgrim descendant groups played a part in projecting a virtuous image of the Pilgrims in 1920, planners for 2020 seek to tell a broader, more nuanced story. They also see the Pilgrims as America’s first immigrants.

“All of our ancestors came with their families with the objective to have a better life, more land, religious freedom, ownership,’’ said Michelle Pecoraro, Plymouth 400’s executive director. “Not only will the Pilgrim story be told, the native story will be told by native people, and in their native voice.’’

That voice is represented in Plymouth 400 by the Wampanoag Advisory Committee, chaired by Linda Coombs of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head/Aquinnah.

“Our Story,’’ a Plymouth 400 traveling exhibit told from the Native American perspective, began its travels two years ago.

The accent on diversity is reflected in the range of the events planned for the milestone.

The largest gathering, Embarkation Day, named for the day the Pilgrims set off from England on the Mayflower, is scheduled for the summer of 2020.

Plymouth 400 describes the event as “a multiday cultural festival . . . national and international in scope, involving invited dignitaries including heads of state.’’

The event is planned for “a park-like setting in or near Plymouth’’ but, unlike 100 years ago, not on the waterfront.

Reflecting the milestone’s international reach, plans call for satellite locations in Provincetown and the United Kingdom, with headliner concerts watched on large outdoor screens.

Other signature programs emphasizing multicultural outreach and the effect of 1620 on the lives of those living here before the Pilgrims’ arrival include a Wampanoag Days 2020 Turtle Island Powwow, celebrating the longevity and continuity of indigenous nations.

The Wampanoag tribe helped the Pilgrims survive their first hard years, and there were numerous other Native American groups in the area, such as the Massachuset, Nauset, Nipmuc, and ­Pequot.

A sunrise commemoration aims to link “thousands of culturally diverse individuals’’ in locations such as Plymouth, England, from which the Mayflower departed, and Provincetown, where it first touched land in America.

The opening ceremony planned for November 2019 will include invitations to heads of state, Mayflower descendants, representatives of indigenous nations, and celebrities. Plans call for inviting 1,620 guests to a two-hour event including music, historical readings, original productions, and visual narratives.

But while plans for Plymouth’s 400th anniversary reflect a more complex view of history, selectmen chairman Ken Tavares said the Pilgrims’ experiences and values still have meaning for Americans today.

“I believe there are a lot of lessons to be learned from what happened there in 1620,’’ Tavares said, citing the Mayflower Compact, which established consent of the governed as the basis for running the colony.

Among the lessons the Pilgrim experience still offers, Tavares said, was that Mayflower survivors, both spiritually oriented Pilgrims and more materially motivated companions, managed to get along to survive.

“It wasn’t easy. It was done with groups that were not necessarily compatible,’’ he said. “That is what is so sadly missed today’’ in national politics.

Robert Knox can be reached at rc.knox2@gmail.com.