Montauk, or Manatacut, or Meuntacut, or Montaukut, is thought to come from an Indigenous word for “fort country.” The word suggests a lookout, most likely from on high and far away, as at Fort Hill, which European settlers also called “New Fort” and today is the home of Fort Hill Cemetery. Formerly the site… Read more »
The contemplative young woman in this postcard turns out to be Diane Duca Delprete, now 78 and living in New Jersey. She was about 13 or 14 when the photograph was taken in the 1950s, one of three decades when her family would spend two weeks each summer camping at Hither Hills State Park…. Read more »
According to the Society for the Preservation of Irish Soda Bread – yes, there is such a thing! – Irish soda bread was born of necessity during the potato famine. Ireland was importing a soft type of wheat from America, and yeast was difficult to obtain. Adding baking soda (also called bread soda) to… Read more »
“A great force of engineers and surveyors is now engaged at Montauk,” the County Review reported in November of 1925. “They have dug a channel from Great Pond to Block Island Sound, and the pond was drained last week. In two hours it fell 11 inches.” Known today as Montauk Inlet, that channel was… Read more »
In Carl Fisher’s mind, apparently, there was nothing an Aerocar couldn’t do. Designed by Glenn Curtiss using lightweight materials and applying aerodynamic principles, the trailer could be hooked to a Hudson Light Runabout to create a land yacht for cruising America’s virgin highways. Fisher hoped to drum up interest in manufacturing several classes of… Read more »
“A virtually self-contained community with its own power plant, the Station has been called Montauk’s second village,” the East Hampton Star noted in May of 1978 after the Air Force announced that it planned to close its base at Camp Hero. The Army had built a coastal defense infrastructure disguised as a fishing village on… Read more »
“The days began in bathing suits then to shorts to pants, long sleeve shirts and jackets,” Lynn Stayton-Eurell wrote in a post on her local history blog, Montauk Unspoiled, of her childhood vacations in Montauk during the 1960s and ‘70s. “Barefoot, to socks and sneakers. Every summer we packed four seasons’ clothing. It got… Read more »
“Jake Wells, he was a bigshot,” Gus Pitts recalled in an oral history interview in 1984. “If you didn’t behave yourself, he’d have you chased off of the beach … You had to go under Jake Wells. Whatever Jake Wells said, you had to do.” Capt. Jake Wells’s Montauk Fish and Supply Company was just… Read more »
Tired old farmers, spritely young wenches, fiddler and dance master, hombreros and sun bonnets, blue denim and gingham, square dance and quadrille, Charles Chaplin and Spanish senoritas mixed colorfully last Saturday night at the Montauk Theatre, after the benefit movies, to the delight of many spectators. That’s what the East Hampton Star reported in… Read more »
“Cranberries are plentiful at Napeague this year and it is predicted that every dinner table will hold a large dish of tasty cranberry sauce this Thanksgiving,” the East Hampton Star reported brightly in September of 1917. It was an announcement that could well have been made more than a century later, one of many updates… Read more »