Local History

Information, News, and features from Montauk Library’s local history collection.

Throwback Thursday – Happiness is…

Throwback Thursday – Happiness is…

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened. — Anatole France, 19th-century French poet, novelist, and journalist Clearly in agreement are more than 70 people who sent in photos of their “babies” for a Montauk Library community slideshow called “Pets of Montauk.” Dogs frolicking on the beach, cats curled on… Read more »

Throwback Thursday – Holiday Cheer

Throwback Thursday – Holiday Cheer

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 »

Throwback Thursday – Cooking With Friends

Throwback Thursday – Cooking With Friends

Before you start, sample the rum and check for quality, begins a recipe for Christmas rum cake in Montauk Cooks with Friends. Like many community cookbooks, it features recipes from local residents and was published to raise money for a local organization, in this case the Friends of the Montauk Library. The cookbook came out… Read more »

Throwback Thursday – Return of the Fresnel Lens

Throwback Thursday – Return of the Fresnel Lens

Since 1796, the Montauk Point Lighthouse has served as a navigational aid to mariners, casting light from the land’s end and acting as a signal for the rocky shoreline. In its early years of operation, a lighthouse keeper attended to the whale oil-fueled lanterns, carrying eight lanterns up the interior spiral staircase and lighting the… Read more »

Throwback Thursday – Happy Turkey Trot!

Throwback Thursday – Happy Turkey Trot!

It draws at least 1,000 people today, but the Thanksgiving Day Run for Fun started in 1976 with John Keeshan and only a handful of other runners bounding from the Plaza to Deep Hollow Ranch on Thanksgiving morning. “Over the years, it grew and … after a while, we ended up with a couple of… Read more »

Throwback Thursday – Main Street Staple

Throwback Thursday – Main Street Staple

On the corner of Main Street and Carl Fisher Plaza, White’s Pharmacy was a magnet for Montauk kids in the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. For starters, it had a soda fountain and a great view of any action that was going down in town. “What the liquor store is now was Dick White’s drug store,”… Read more »

Throwback Thursday – Veterans at Camp Wikoff

Throwback Thursday – Veterans at Camp Wikoff

Tens of thousands of veterans were sent to Montauk late in the summer of 1898 to quarantine and recover from tropical diseases before fully returning home from the Spanish American War. Montauk was remote, its sea breezes were restorative, and the troops had been “so weakened and shattered as to be ripe for dying like… Read more »

Throwback Thursday – Highway Haiku

Throwback Thursday – Highway Haiku

“I don’t know who first coined the term ‘highway haiku’ for vanity plates, but I think it is most appropriate. Lovers of Montauk are so clever in how they express themselves, even in such a brief way,” Mark Levy wrote in a letter to the editor of the East Hampton Star in 2016. At the… Read more »