“I love Montauk and don’t want to see it ruined,” said an advertisement in the July 16, 1970, issue of the East Hampton Star. The ad included a mail-in coupon for donations to the Concerned Citizens of Montauk, a group that had recently formed to resist a proposed 1,500- home development of Indian Field. April… Read more »
Vanished, it would seem, are the days when admission to any event cost less than ten dollars, as it did when Frank Borth designed this $1.75 ticket to tour the Montauk Lighthouse. A professional illustrator, he was a true friend to the Montauk Historical Society as well as other community organizations, including the fire department,… Read more »
Nestled within a residential area off Second House Road, one of the few maritime grassland remnants in New York persists. Montauk Mountain Preserve is a modest 11-acre parcel rich in history and biodiversity. The Nature Conservancy has preserved it through a series of acquisitions and donations made in the 1980s and 1990s. A .5-mile trail… 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 »
We could all use some good role models … and guess what? We’ve had plenty of local heroes we can celebrate and perhaps even emulate on February 26, which is Set a Good Example Day. First is Richard Gilmartin, seen in front of the Montauk Lighthouse in the photo above. A dedicated historian and sport… Read more »
George Watson bought a dive bar he would later call The Dock from Bob Fitzgerald in 1973 after a handshake deal over 9 a.m. shots of blackberry brandy. “It was a cinderblock building. It was kind of raw looking,” he recalled during an oral history interview late last year. “And one of the first things… Read more »
Is there anything sweeter than a community cookbook? Often compiled to raise money for a good cause, they tend to be stuffed with all manner of extra ingredients. Corny jokes, endearing illustrations, poetry, sage advice, tips for hunting, gathering, and fishing, the names of book committee volunteers and recipes from others fondly remembered, even celebrities… Read more »
“When I struck the Napeague road I thought I had come to the abomination of desolation,” said Florence Sammis in 1967 of her first trip to Montauk, in 1918. Interviewed in 1976, Martha Greene remembered a similarly lonely landscape when she commuted from East Hampton in the 1930s as a secretary for the Montauk Beach… Read more »
Brrrr! Bill Gosman recently donated this icy image to the Montauk Library Archives, along with 16 others depicting activity on the harbor as far back as the 1920s but primarily in the 1940s and ‘50s. Bill is, of course, a member of the Gosman family who over several generations built a popular harborside empire… Read more »
Santa looks like such a contented fellow. The red and green color scheme, the Dalmatian pup, the fishing lures placed inexplicably on top of a drum. Fred Guardineer, the illustrator, lived in Babylon and wrote a “Fish & Game” column for The Babylon Beacon. So what does he have to do with Montauk? Fishing lines… Read more »