MARTHA’S VINEYARD
Perhaps best known as an affluent summer colony and a popular destination for America’s liberal elite, the charming island community of Martha’s Vineyard has much to tempt the discerning tourist.
A popular destination for America’s liberal elite, the island community has much to offer the discerning traveller.
I’m ordering farm-fresh goodies at the Right Fork Diner overlooking the Katama Airfield on Martha’s Vineyard while just a little bit distracted by the red biplanes taking off for joyrides. My waitress responds – surprisingly – with an Aussie accent. Later, as I tuck into a scrumptious BALT (bacon-avocado-lettuce and tomato sandwich) with a Bad Martha Vineyard Summer Ale, I ask her whether this 230km2 island off the coast of Massachusetts lives up to its reputation as a hideaway for liberalleaning rich and famous Americans.
“Well, Michelle was eating lunch over there yesterday,” she laughs, referring to the former First Lady. “She was wearing a big hat and sunglasses so most people didn’t notice who she was. But out here most people don’t get too fussed about celebrities, which is why they like it so much.”
Bending a little closer, she adds, “She and Barack just bought a house nearby, after renting here most summers when he was President.” Nothing about this appeared in the press until several days later, so it was helpful to have an Aussie on the ground for the lowdown. Kate (we’re on first names now) also tells me where that other stellar First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, had a house ‘Up-Island’ in Aquinnah. Her daughter, Caroline, renovated it as a family summer retreat after her mother died. It’s now on the market for $US65 million.
Just six kilometres off the southern coast of Cape Cod, triangular-shaped Martha’s Vineyard has an intriguing geography, a fascinating multicultural history and a storied present. Six distinctive townships dot the island, with the eastern side more developed and the west more rural and wild. Almost a quarter of the island is wooded conservation land, while there are dozens of ponds and 19 named beaches along 200 kilometres of diverse coastline. The Wampanoag, or ‘People of the First Light’, have lived here for thousands of years and Aquinnah on the island’s western tip is their ancestral home.
We head there at dusk to watch the sunset from Gay Head Lighthouse and walk Moshup Trail to Aquinnah Beach to marvel at its fossil-rich russet cliffs surrounded by a molten sea.
A STORIED PAST
Australian-born Pulitzer-Prize winning author and Martha’s Vineyard resident, Geraldine Brooks brings to life early encounters between the Wampanoag and Pilgrim settlers in her bestselling novel Caleb’s Crossing, which is based on the real-life story of a Wampanoag tribal member who was the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College in the 1660s.
WE MARVEL AT THE FOSSILRICH RUSSET CLIFFS.
In the 18th century, the Wampanoag helped the settlers become successful whalers (Tashtego in Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick is a harpooner from Aquinnah). Today, Edgartown’s white clapboard, black-shuttered Greek Revival sea captains’ homes and soaring Old Whaling Church are potent reminders of the riches made from whale oil.
We mix our history with presentday pleasures, shopping at Vineyard Vines, whose preppy clothes are inspired by The Vineyard’s coastal motifs, and Slate boutique, where you can pick up an ‘I Miss Barack’ sweatshirt amongst a curated collection of island charmers. We enjoy a seafood lunch at the totally revamped Harbor View Hotel, which overlooks the Edgartown Lighthouse and Chappaquiddick Island. You may remember that name. It was once linked to Edgartown by a bridge made infamous when Ted Kennedy drove off it one night in 1969 and his companion Mary Jo Kopechne died. These days, you take the Chappy Ferry to explore various wilderness preserves and the lovely Japanese Mytoi Garden and wonder just where actress Meg Ryan’s gorgeous home might be hidden.
We rent bikes to cycle on dedicated paths to Edgartown’s fabulous 5km-long Katama barrier beach backed by dune grasses. With permits you can also drive along the sand all the way to Chappaquiddick and/or go clamming in Katama Bay.
Heading back into the Edgartown Historic District, we sample freshly made tacos and killer margaritas at
Backyard Taco before settling into old box pews at the Federated Church to enjoy a rousing performance of a cappella singing by Vineyard Sound, a young tie-bedecked, chino shortsattired all-male chorus. Afterwards we grab a spot at The Port Hunter, run with panache by two local brothers. The drinks are excellent, all the local seafood-centric dishes are sublime, and there’s an edgy line-up of musicians that keep the red-brick shopfront and terrace hopping.
The Civil War was instrumental in ending the whaling era in the mid-1800s and what replaced it is another fascinating wrinkle in the Martha’s Vineyard story. In 1835, a new
industry was born when Methodists started holding multi-day tented summer camp meetings in an oak grove on the island’s northern bluffs. As families returned year after year, to not only enjoy communal praying but also the joys of sea bathing, they built small wooden cottages with porches, balconies and decorative trim. Eventually, hundreds of these lollipop hued Carpenter Gothic-style houses nestled close together around treelined circles, transforming the area now known as Oak Bluffs into one of America’s earliest seaside resorts.
A local gives us a tour around the 318 remaining gingerbread houses as well as the open-sided 1879 Tabernacle with its wrought iron arches, octagonal cupola and stained-glass windows. Sermons are still conducted here while its Friday twilight concerts are a perfect way to enjoy balmy summer evenings. In the 19th century and through the mid-20th century, when much of America was racially segregated, middle-class African Americans bought summer homes or stayed in hotels here.
AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY
An African-American Heritage trail includes stops at Harlem labour leader Joseph Overton’s oceanfront mansion, known as the Summer White House of the civil rights movement and a place Martin Luther King visited. Also on the tour is the house of Harlem Renaissance writer Dorothy West, which Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis visited regularly when she was an editor at Doubleday. Film director
Spike Lee and Harvard history professor Henry Louis Gates Jr are two of Oak Bluffs’ current high-profile summer residents.
These days it offers a beguiling mix of honky-tonk, multicultural history and good old-fashioned seaside charm. With kids in tow, we head to the 1876 Flying Horses Carousel, the oldest continuously operating carousel in the country, then enjoy a stirring folk opera at the octagonal Union Chapel about local supporters of the underground railway for runaway slaves. For dinner, we devour edgy dishes of local seafood and produce at the funky art-filled Red Cat Kitchen, a
favourite with the Obamas, before lining up in a side alley to get piping hot donuts at Back Door Donuts. (The Clintons, by the way, are also regular summer visitors to Martha’s Vineyard. Bill’s hangout is The Black Dog Tavern in nearby Vineyard Haven, famous for its eponymous t-shirts.)
Between Oak Bluffs and Edgartown, State Beach is a sinuous bayside strand with a rather unprepossessing movie artefact smack in the middle. Ever since Steven Spielberg filmed Jaws in Martha’s Vineyard back in 1975, locals and visitors like to jump off what is now known as ‘Jaws Bridge’ in a summer rite of passage.
ON THE UPSIDE
Eager to explore Up Island, we drive through woods and fields rimmed with old stone walls to the buzzing West Tisbury Saturday Farmers Market held outside the old post-and-beam Grange Hall. Stalls are brimming with sunflowers and cosmos, freshly baked fruit pies, just-picked corn and heirloom tomatoes, handmade jams, smoked bluefish, locally grown lamb and beef, and other goodies such as Anh’s deep-fried Vietnamese spring rolls, a market staple since his grandmother Khen started serving them decades ago.
Just down the road, we visit Alley’s General Store, which has been an emporium of the essential and the fanciful since 1858 and is still the aorta of this fishing and farming community. Afterwards, we walk around Thomas Maley’s large playful sculptures of dancing nudes at the Field Gallery. For sweet treats, we pick up chocolate chip cookies at the rustic Orange Peel Bakery run by Wampanoag elder Juli Vanderhoop.
Finally, we head down to pretty Squibnocket Beach, one of several residents-only beaches (including the fine-sand Lambert’s Cove on Vineyard Sound) that are only accessible to visitors after 6pm. As we wander along the boulder-strewn beach framed by sandy cliffs, I recall that five-time Grammy Award winner James Taylor spent many summers in these parts, recording numerous songs from his Squibnocket farmhouse. His former wife, Carly Simon, still lives here and his brother Hugh runs the sunny Outermost Inn not far away in Aquinnah, where you can feast on Chilmark oysters and seafood pasta rich with local lobster, littleneck clams, juniper-cured pancetta and corn.
“IT OFFERS A MIX OF MULTICULTURAL HISTORY AND SEASIDE CHARM.”