Forty-five years ago this week, New York State took ownership of the privately owned Montauk Golf and Racquet Club and named it “Montauk Downs State Park.” The state was well into planning a public golf course at Hither Hills State Park, but an option to buy the existing 171-acre Montauk Golf tract for $1.325 million… Read more »
Harrison Tweed and six other sportsmen were delighted to be able to purchase Brightmoor, Andrew Orr’s old “cottage” in the Montauk Association, in March of 1924. Tweed and his friends paid a little more than $2,000 each for the house, which sat on 19-plus acres with 700 feet of oceanfront perfect for surfcasting for striped… Read more »
Nothing like a hearty breakfast before harvesting ice on a winter’s day. Eugene Beckwith Sr. recalled that the bosses fed the men quite generously before they set off to work in the 1930s. “Oh, gosh, they had pancakes and sausage and pork chops,” he recalled in a 1969 oral history interview. “I eat one pork… Read more »
The first passenger train to run to Montauk left Long Island City at 8:30 a.m. on December 17, 1895. There were about 50 “excursionists” that day, and 30 of them boarded in East Hampton with lunch baskets in their hands. “The train consisted of one private dining room car, a parlor car, mail and baggage… Read more »
Who else remembers card catalogues and date-due stamps and brontosaurus-size desktops? Leased for $1 a year from the Montauk Community Church, the first Montauk Library opened on November 24, 1980, in a cottage that was miniature but a massive improvement over not having any library at all. “On opening day, it was reported that there… Read more »
Jeannette Edwards Rattray wrote in 1938 about a previous time, in the late 19th century, when Montauk was a “Gunner’s Paradise,” a “practically womanless Paradise for groups of men who went ‘on’ gunning for days and weeks at a time.” They camped in little shacks and packed few provisions, as they could live on… Read more »
“A great price for a great waste of sand” – that’s how the New York Times described the auctioning off of Montauk for $151,000 in 1879. White settlers from East Hampton had used Montauk for pastureland for more than two centuries, building First, Second, and Third House for shepherds and visitors. Now Montauk’s new owner… Read more »