A nasty horse named Humpty Dumpty gets a kick out of throwing riders. A bathtub morphs into a UFO and lifts off. A little girl wins a baby elephant in a mail-in coupon contest. A surfcaster hooks a mermaid off Montauk Point. The imagination of the illustrator Frank Borth extended all the way from drawing… Read more »
Ever wonder how you can learn more about the history of Montauk? Reading our weekly Throwback Thursday posts is a great starting point and if you want to dig deeper into a topic or have local history-related questions you can visit the Montauk Library’s archives. But what is an archives anyway? “An archives is a… Read more »
Montauk’s forests, hills, valleys, cliffs, and shorelines have long inspired creative types flocking to the East End for open spaces and wild muses. Montauk’s untamed woodlands and resident trees have been contemplated by writers and artists alike. In the library’s collection and on the community room walls we see instances of their influence in poetry,… Read more »
Staff Sergeant Arthur M. Dunne (1916-2009), a World War II veteran, first came to East Hampton in June 1942, the day after the Nazi saboteurs landed in Amagansett. The next month he was assigned to Montauk to install and operate a radar tower at the Montauk Point Lighthouse. By this time, the Coast Guard had… Read more »
*A version of this post originally ran on September 28, 2022. New photographs and information about our current exhibition have been added.* As Autumn sets in, beachgoers clear the Montauk shorelines, retreating to apple orchards, pumpkin patches, and fall foliage excursions. Meanwhile, for surfers in the Northeast, the fall signals large swells generated by late-season… Read more »
Life-saving service history is linked to early Chinese practices, like the Chinkiang Association for the Saving of Life established in 1708. It was the first life-saving station institution in the world, consisting of a complex series of stations dotting the coastlines of rivers, bays, and oceans. Chinese benevolent societies and the Imperial Chinese government also… Read more »
A logbook, or ship’s log, is an official record of events, conditions, and observations documented during the voyage of a ship, generally kept by captains or first mates. Historical logbooks provide information about the ship’s position, weather, ports visited, and daily life aboard the vessel. The engineer’s log of the steamship “George Appold” chronicles the… Read more »
By taking just a short jaunt from the parking area on Napeague Harbor Road through a maritime forest of gnarled oaks and knotted pitch pines, one can travel back in time to an ancient forest and duneland resembling a far-off desert destination. The Walking Dunes, as they are aptly named for their ever-shifting voyage southward… Read more »
The Montauk Art Show on the village green is a cornerstone event of the vibrant art scene on the East End. The Montauk Artists’ Association was founded as the Montauk Artists in 1995 by Percy Heath, an artist, jazz musician, and avid fisherman who brought together local artists to share and showcase their work. What… Read more »
During the dog days of summer, you will find splashes of pink dotting the roadsides throughout Montauk, especially in low-lying areas on the margins of wetlands and shorelines. These lush native displays belong to the swamp rose mallow or Hibiscus moscheutos, as it is known scientifically. The swamp rose mallow, commonly called the hardy… Read more »