Information, News, and features from Montauk Library’s local history collection.
It is no surprise that Camp Hero (Montauk Air Force Station) is the most requested topic to research in the Montauk Library Archives. The former military base, turned state park, is not only brimming with lore and legend, but also significant for the military innovation that took place at the coastal defense site. These factors… Read more »
This shot from Jane Liebell’s collection of photographs donated to the Montauk Library in 2005 says everything about seasonal celebrations in November: the Girl Scouts are at the firehouse, and have just cooked a delicious Thanksgiving turkey! (Although “the proof of the pudding is in the eating,” as they say.) We know that a Boy… Read more »
For those who celebrate, the countdown to Thanksgiving is just 7 days away. Whether you’re cooking at home, traveling to see family and friends, dining out, or ordering in, you have probably started making plans and gathering groceries. If you haven’t and are still looking for some sweet and savory inspiration, take a look at… Read more »
Funny – considering it was she who advocated, in “A Room of One’s Own,” for a peaceful, quiet space to write – that it was Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? that made it possible to provide just such a space for writers and visual artists here in Montauk. In the 1960s, after Albee… Read more »
Every week, the Montauk Library Archives fulfills historical reference and research requests from local newspaper reporters, documentarians, podcasters, authors, and the like. You may have seen images from our archives last month in the East Hampton Star’s article “Carl Fisher’s Montauk, 100 Years Ago” or aired on a recent episode of the Smithsonian Channel’s Mysteries… Read more »
A friend wrote recently to ask if there were ghosts at the Montauk Manor. About 20 years ago, he said, his sister and her husband stayed in a room on one of the upper floors — perhaps one built into the roof level, as she remembered a sloped ceiling – in the massive, four-story landmark…. Read more »
Presumably in town to wrestle the native landscape into a Miami Beach of the North, Carl Fisher’s investors (above) at least had the deference to remove their hats at Montauk’s oldest settlers’ cemetery. That was wise: In 2011, East Hampton Star reported in jest that Montauk’s first lighthouse keeper, Jacob Hand, who was laid… Read more »
“The first annual Community Picnic and Field Day Saturday, sponsored by Montauk Youth Inc., has been termed a success,” The East Hampton Star reported on October 2, 1980. The newspaper added rather poetically that many local families had taken part despite the fields at Montauk County Park having been “windswept.” Baking and cooking contests… Read more »
In late October of 1903, a young couple joined hands in marriage atop the lighthouse tower. Their choice of the venue arose from their happenstance meeting there, when Evelyn Cook was visiting her aunt and uncle, Margaret and Captain James G. Scott, who was the lighthouse keeper living there at the time. The groom was… Read more »
It was August 1898 when Camp Wikoff opened to what quickly grew to be more than 20,000 sickened, injured, and weakened soldiers returning from the Spanish-American War. A hastily created patchwork of tents and infirmaries blanketed virtually all of Montauk, from Fort Pond Bay to Ditch Plains to Third House. It was intended to… Read more »