Information, News, and features from Montauk Library’s local history collection.
On December 7, 1923, the East Hampton Star reprinted, on its front page, a fish tale that had appeared a few weeks earlier in the Newark Evening News. Of course it mentioned the largest striped bass caught by surfcasters in a blitz near Montauk Point so far that season – 42 pounds. “But not this… Read more »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
“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 »
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 »
Who lived in Montauk in 1930? The U.S. Census of that year shines light not only on who lived here but also what they did and where they came from. Tuthill, Grimes, Joyce, McDonald, Syvertsen, Paon, Pfund, Duryea, Burke, Martell, Pitts, Tuma, Gilmartin, Briand – many last names reverberate locally almost 100 years later. A… Read more »
The shore at Fort Pond Bay is often so sleepy it can be difficult to imagine how awake it’s been historically. Thousands of veterans of the Spanish-American War – Teddy Roosevelt’s “Rough Riders” – disembarked from transport ships in Fort Pond Bay in 1898 to quarantine and recuperate at Camp Wikoff, whose entire infrastructure had… Read more »
Gone but (maybe) not forgotten: Slater Drugs, the New York Ocean Science Laboratory, the Dolphin, Bill’s Greenhouse, First National Bank, the Ronjo, the Texaco station, and $50 fines in East Hampton Town. Still kicking (at least so far): the New York State parks, Gosman’s Dock, Uihlein’s, the Viking, White’s, the IGA, John’s Pancake House, Shagwong,… Read more »