By taking just a short jaunt from the parking area on Napeague Harbor Road through a maritime forest of gnarled oaks and knotted pitch pines, one can travel back in time to an ancient forest and duneland resembling a far-off desert destination. The Walking Dunes, as they are aptly named for their ever-shifting voyage southward… Read more »
September 5 will be Day 1 for Montauk School students – a Thursday, which should give them a soft landing after summer vacation. For the second September in a row, Jack Perna, the school’s longtime superintendent and principal, will still be on vacation, however, having retired in 2023 after more than 50 years. Hired by… 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 »
Built in 1896 in Wilmington, Del., the “Shinnecock” was long recognized as ‘the Queen of the Fleet” and, as Ron Ziel wrote in Steel Rails to the Sunrise, “one of the finest American steamboats.” Certainly her debut in Sag Harbor stirred up excitement: “The air was full of noise of steam whistles and the cheers… Read more »
Most of the historic audio materials in the Montauk Library’s archives consist of recordings of oral history interviews, lectures, and local community organization meetings captured on cassette. But hidden among the stacks was a copy of Old Montauk: The Song for People Who Love It on vinyl record. Old Montauk is a country-inspired ballad performed… Read more »
Leisuramas were small, cookie-cutter vacation homes built in the Culloden Shores subdivision of Montauk in the early 1960s. They were designed to be affordable and came conveniently pre-furnished from top to bottom. “All you need is a key and a six-pack,” Frank Tuma, who managed their construction, was rumored to have said. The marketing of… Read more »
Everything about this photo is perfect, from the fringe on the awning to the automobiles to the freestanding phone booth. The year was 1960, a slice of an era that was nearly as cool as these sunglasses. Note the lattice-y gridwork in the background behind the phone booth and the flag. For decades that grid… Read more »
“Sportfishing, even for the biggest fish, was not just a man’s sport,” Bill Akin wrote in The Golden Age of Montauk Sportfishing. “Women had always been part of the picture.” Women – particularly the partners of wealthy sportfishermen – boated some impressively large specimens. One was Chisie Farrington, the wife of the sports journalist and… Read more »
Montauk’s first Blessing of the Fleet – born as the “Blessing of the Boats” – was in 1956 and the brainchild of Vinnie Grimes, a charter boat captain and Navy veteran who’d seen Portuguese tuna fishermen blessing their boats before they headed out to sea on the West Coast. “It is an old European custom… Read more »
The house that used to stand on Sandpiper Hill, an oceanfront estate just west of Ditch Plains, was built for a Wall Street broker named Walter P. McCaffray in 1928, during the same gilded age that enticed Carl Fisher to stick shovels into the wild Montauk landscape. In fact, Fisher’s architect, Richard B. Webb, also… Read more »