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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
“Gather wild grapes in early September,” Jean Fischer advised in her recipe for Wild Grape Jam with Lime in Montauk Cooks with Friends. “Many vines will not have fruit. The heady rich aroma of ripe grapes and your nose will help you find them.” It’s true that only the female vines of wild fox grapes… Read more »
After Ruth Woodrow died in 1983, Bessi Hochstein wrote a letter to the East Hampton Star describing her memories of boarding at Mrs. Woodrow’s cabins in Shepherd’s Neck. “The first time I was in Montauk was early spring, 1979, the year before I entered college,” she wrote, “I came, like hordes of others my… Read more »
After a bright and fair morning on September 21, 1938, an unexpected Category 3 hurricane made landfall on Long Island around 2 pm. With no cause for alarm, the New York Times’s forecast for the day read “Rain, probably heavy today and tomorrow, cooler.” No one had predicted the storm to take its path north… Read more »
The man clamming in the foreground of this photograph was known as Augustus Petitpas in his native Nova Scotia, and as Ben Pitts in the United States. The beached boat listing behind him in Lake Montauk was known as the “Pelican,” an open party boat that Long Island Rail Road passengers would eagerly jump… Read more »
On that day, August 25, they wandered from one isolated dwelling to another, frightening most residents but managing to purchase two dogs, a bottle of gin, and some sweet potatoes with the Spanish gold doubloons they had found aboard the ‘Amistad.’ — Mutiny on the Amistad In August of 1839, nine Africans came ashore at… Read more »