USA > Massachusetts > Dukes County > Marthas Vineyard > Martha's Vineyard, summer resort, 1835-1935 > Part 8
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In May, 1872, a plan is filed showing all the land between Farm Pond and Sengekontacket Pond laid out into lots and avenues, not to mention parks. The sponsor is H. H. Davis, and this develop- ment, known as Ocean Heights, includes the land that is, in future years, to become the home of the Martha's Vineyard Country Club. Farm Pond is, on the plan, Tiberias Lake, and the southernmost of the small ponds next to the beach is Mahomy Lake. Years are to pass before this becomes part of Hart Haven. Thirty lots are sold at once, at prices ranging from $150 to $200.
C. R. Beetle, whose farm adjoins the new Ocean Heights, dis- poses of his property to Shubael Hawes Norton who, in turn, sells half at an advance in price to Jonathan Bourne Jr. of New Bedford.
In June, 1872, the Vineyard Grove Company is reporting sales of $4,000 in a single week. A syndicate including Messrs. Hayman of Taunton, Pratt of Middleborough and Sturgis of Oak Bluffs, pur- chase of Nicholas Norton six acres of land near Trapp's Pond at Edgartown, and negotiate for several acres near the southeastern shore of Sengekontacket.
"The fever," reports the Vineyard Gazette, "is rushing toward Edgartown (which, by the way, is an extremely sensible move), and many usually placid, quiet and serene men exhibit strong premonitory symptoms of a severe attack of the contagion. The disease is pleasant and we hope it will continue its march Edgartown-wards."
This hope is not vain. The rush continues. The former Norton land at Trapp's Pond is now Ocean View, and a slightly elevated place known as the Mitchman field is laid out in lots and rejoices in the name of Lookout Mountain.
"Who comes next in the line of new enterprises?" inquires the
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Vineyard Gazette, editorially. "Welcome all! and may the tide continue to rise until the whole of Martha's Vineyard shall be filled with life and activity."
An old and prominent real estate operator soon gives the following approximate figures of the acreage in new developments : Wesleyan Grove, 20 acres; Oak Bluffs, 120; Vineyard Highlands, 225; Bellevue Heights, 165; Sunset Heights, 10; Prospect Heights and Sea View Hill, 15; Central Place, 12; Oak Grove, 15; Forest Hill, 20; Engle- side and Ocean Heights, 400; Bay View, 6; Lagoon Heights and Grovedale, 300; making a total of 1,308 acres between Sengekon- tacket Pond and the Lagoon. Then, in the neighborhood of Vineyard Haven, are Cedar Neck, 15; Oklahoma, 150; and West Point Grove, 40, a total of 205 acres. Beyond Sengekontacket Pond are Ocean View, Lookout Mountain, and one other purchase, making 75 acres. And Katama, beyond Edgartown, closes up the column with 600 acres, making a total on the Island of 2, 188 acres. This estimate is made in July, 1873.
"I've been up," writes a correspondent of the Gazette. "Do you ask where Up is? Up, sir, is Oak Bluffs; Up is Wesleyan Grove- Vineyard Highlands-Bellevue Heights-a territory bounded on the north by Lagoon Pond and about twenty-seven cords of painted stakes, on the south by Sengekontacket Bridge, on the east by Vine- yard Sound, and on the west by a general exuberance of nature; the whole constituting one of the most remarkable districts to be found on the coast, or anywhere else. Here for three quarters of the year the abomination of desolation-the stillness of almost utter aban- donment-prevails, and the few scattered laborers hurry along the avenues looking askance, as though the long lines of deserted tene- ments were so many platoons of ghosts; while during the other quarter all the hum and hubbub of a permanent metropolis may be heard in the land : crowds surge to and fro, intent on business or pleasure, horse cars pass and repass, newsboys yell, ladies go shopping, and everything bespeaks the city. Here the real-estater comes to fleece his fellows, portraying with agonizing earnestness the merits of corner lots and water lots, Highland and Bluff; and here, on the testimony of one of your own prominent townsmen, in the shade of these pleasant groves and by these rippling waters, the Vineyard
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girls have long been accustomed to find their life companions, and the damsels of today are looking hitherward with longing eyes, awaiting their destiny. Here, finally, is that wonderful annual gathering of professing Christians whose congregations, numbered by thousands, sit down beneath the great canopy, and divines from near and far, men famed in the religious annals of the country, address the devout multitude, picturing the glories of and exhorting to prepara- tion for, the world to come."
For years the village of Holmes Hole, and later the same village under its new name of Vineyard Haven, had been regarding the hive of activity across the harbor with increasing interest. The heart of the boom lay at Oak Bluffs, the Highlands and Wesleyan Grove; yet Holmes Hole had to travel an irksome and expensive seven and a half miles to reach these prosperous summer communities by land. By rights Tisbury business men were no more than two miles from the camp ground; why should the narrow outlet of the Lagoon cut them off from a fruitful association? It should, surely, prove an easy matter to bridge the Lagoon opening and built a road directly to the summer center of all affairs.
This was considerably agitated, as well by the Eastville residents as by the Tisbury merchants, but the plan drew black looks from Edgartown. Some croakers had been saying that the development at the groves and bluffs would be the ruin of Edgartown, and such might be the case if the business were to be diverted to Tisbury by way of a convenient road and bridge.
At length Tisbury formally petitioned for the improvement. Edgartown held a special town meeting and voted its vigorous oppo- sition. Nevertheless, Tisbury laid out a road within her own limits as far as the pond opening, and Eastville was incited to bitterness against the Edgartown government which was not likely to die down.
In March, 1870, Tisbury triumphed in the state of legislature, winning passage of an act authorizing the construction of the Lagoon bridge, provided Tisbury paid two-thirds of the cost. The act also stipulated that if the county commissioners did not take steps toward the building of the bridge within six months an action could be brought in the superior court, and the court would then appoint
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Above: this was Vineyard Haven. The steamboat wharf is seen near the center, and the Beach Road and Lagoon in the background. Below Bradley's store, Vineyard Haven, and the storekeeper's home.
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special commissioners to undertake the project forthwith. The months passed, and there was no evidence that anything had been done. In September, Henry Bradley et al, selectmen of Tisbury, petitioned the superior court under the terms of the act; but the court ruled that the county commissioners had, in fact, "taken steps" within the meaning of the enabling act.
If this was an Edgartown victory, it was an empty one, for the bridge could now be delayed no longer. The town of Tisbury built its new road to the opening at a cost of $2,100, and in March, 1871, the Lagoon bridge was completed. The summer of that year saw the promise of the improvement realized, for each day from 150 to 200 carriages passed across the bridge linking Vineyard Haven with the hive of the whole Island, the source of energy and profits.
Where now was Edgartown? It availed little to have the busy developments within her town limits when they were cementing a convenient geographical affiliation with Tisbury. A note of jealousy appeared sometimes. For instance, an Edgartown citizen rose to say, "Persons from the immortal camp ground prefer it (Edgartown) to the condensed, oppressive heat and clinging dust of that popular resort."
But a council of action suggested that the old town try a prescrip- tion of the Vineyard Haven medicine: a beach road from Oak Bluffs to Edgartown would shorten the distance between the two centers. Might it not bring to Edgartown enough new business to pay its cost many times over?
"What does some croaking, cold-water man exclaim, 'The road will cost one hundred thousand dollars,' " asked an advocate in the columns of the Vineyard Gazette. "What does that amount to among fifty stockholders? It is only the expense of fitting out two whaleships with a greater risk of losing the money invested, than if placed in the road. Give us the profits for the next five years of the horse car travel, and the toll-house placed on the carriage road, and you may have the profits of your three most successful whaleships during the same time : not mentioning the benefit derived by Edgar- town, the most important of all."
"The harvest of the ocean cannot now fill our barn with plenty, scattering the seeds through the barren town, and making green
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her thoroughfares of business. The ocean must be looked away from, and terra firma gazed upon," the advocate continued.
"Would that the enterprising spirit of the Oak Bluffs Company could stimulate the people of Edgartown. A company that took the uninviting barren Bluffs, when public sentiment seemed opposed, and made that desert blossom like the rose. It grasped the enterprise with a business grip, and success naturally followed. The rushing tide of humanity that is sweeping against those Bluffs has turned this way. The hotels are all full, lots are being negotiated for, buildings are soon to be erected, and it remains for the moneyed men of Edgar- town to say whether the incoming tide shall be encouraged."
Said the Whaleman's Shipping List, of New Bedford, the trade journal of the whaling industry : "The Gazette has some sensible talk about making Edgartown famous as a Watering Place. This should have been seriously considered a score of years ago. There is no better location (if we except Nantucket) on the whole Atlantic Coast. A line of cottages down the Neck would find a plenty of customers .
But Edgartown hesitated still, and it was not until January, 1872, that the voters in town meeting assembled voted to construct the beach road.
The cost eventually amounted to $60,000 for a common dirt high- way, which was soon in need of repairs. It was asserted later, par- ticularly by the malcontents of Eastville, that reliable contractors would have built a macadam road for $40,000; but the selfishness of Edgartown made the town do the job itself, so that the citizens could hire themselves and their horses at a liberal rate of pay.
It had been anticipated that a new era of material prosperity would date from the completion of the beach road, and that posterity would look back with grateful blessings upon the accomplishment-as if it were the nature of posterity to give credit for material things. The fact was that the first results of the beach road opening were dis- appointing. The boom continued, increasing by leaps and bounds, but, for the most part, it was still "Up there." The tide did not flow to Edgartown through the artery which had been provided.
Fortunately, a group of citizens had not waited for the road but had cast about for a development of their own-not a mere checker-
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board of painted stakes in an empty field with a pretentious name, but a second Oak Bluffs, on a grand scale, with wharf and hotel and bands playing. Their eyes went seaward, where their ears never lost awareness of the eternal beat of the ocean, and something in their minds kindled and glowed as they saw, for the first time, the possibilities of the plain and shore of Katama.
XIV Katama the Lovely
Of all the land companies and real estate projects which were launched on Martha's Vineyard in the roseate days which ushered in the eighteen seventies, none was the expression of a more vaulting ambition, a more sanguine invitation to success, and a more prac- tical display of energy than the venture of the Katama Land Com- pany. The great Oak Bluffs development was found waiting in the open palm of the hand of destiny, but for Katama the Lovely the sea captains reached into the sea air and followed the call of the waves.
Except for a rather low wood of oak, shaped by the winds with more grace than mankind ever achieved with shears in a topiary garden, Katama lay as bare as it was level, a tract of the Great Plain where plain, bay and ocean met. The terrain was gently undu- lating, with the creases and furrows of subglacial streams from long ago; roads crossed it here and there, but one could turn from the wagon tracks and drive at will across the open country. From Katama Bay to Edgartown Great Pond was about a mile, and here, parallel to the dunes and sandy shelf of the South Beach was built the Matta- keesett Herring Creek, through which alewives swam from the salt water to the fresh.
On the bay side the plain ended in a slight fall, occasional low bluffs, and a shore of gravel and lapping blue water. Across was Chappaquiddick, grassy and dotted with pines and groves of oak. Both the Katama and Chappaquiddick shores of the bay were varied with points and inlets. Nearer the South Beach Mattakeesett Bay
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reached far inland on the Katama Side, so that the plain land of Katama was beset and tempered with endless possessions of tidal water.
The South Beach itself was a tremendous moving beach which marched up and down as the Atlantic broke and the winds beat upon its sands; the shore built up a great width of white sand, and then sent it drifting away again. The shape and extent were never twice alike, except in some truces of summer when the white beach was laved in hot rays of the sun shining through cool, crystal air.
The beholder at Katama understood that it was not necessary to go into the high places of the world to experience a full sense of the loftiness, the utter immensity of sky and wind. Here the breeze did not simply ruffle the surface of the land and water-it reached from the ground to the sky, and the clouds themselves were part of Katama. The sun, moon and sky were all part of Katama; there was no division, no disunion among them. Solitary, with a far-off con- viction intoned over and over again by the rhythm of the ocean, Katama was nevertheless removed by the whole measure of the sky from what is known as loneliness. The indwelling arrangements of the Island plain, its airs and its shores, filled it with companionship and invited the mind of man to experiences in which his own patterns played a minor, a subdued part.
In the Indian language Katama meant crab-fishing place; but there was a legend which made Katama a beautiful maiden, and Mattakeesett an Indian chief of comely presence. According to the tale, the two loved with a simple and eternal passion; and, in extre- mity, pressed by hostile warriors, they swam out from this level plain into the sea, and met death together among the sunlit crests of the greatest maker of romance.
Across the plain went fowlers in season to shoot ducks and geese, across it went the pond and creek men in early spring to seine the alewives, across it drove summer visitors to behold the Niagaras of the surf. And yet, when all was said and done, Katama might have been considered a remote and barren place from the standpoint of real estate development. That it was always a little cooler than the village of Edgartown, that it lay a little nearer the Gulf Stream than any other land on the North Atlantic Coast, that it moved
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through the seasons of the year with infinite constancy and infinite change-these facts might, after all, have been held extraneous to the requirements of cottage lots and cottage owners, the most gre- garious of human beings. And yet again, as the sea captains knew, Wesleyan Grove had been as far removed and yet more barren only a few decades before.
The man who first conceived the Katama enterprise was Captain Nathaniel M. Jernegan of Edgartown, one of the ablest and most successful of Vineyard whaling captains. He had been born in Edgartown on August 13, 1820, and in early life had gone to sea. He had commanded the ships Adeline, Gideon Howland, Eliza F. Mason, George and Susan, and Thomas Dickason in the South Atlantic, North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It was believed that he had sailed farther north than any other whaling master. He had sailed for the Howlands of New Bedford, who were Friends, and throughout his long career he had never taken a whale on Sunday.
"Hum"! said an acquaintance, when this fact was being cited. "If Nathan'l Jernegan sees a whale on Sunday, he knows where to find it on Monday"!
Once in the Eliza F. Mason three mutineers set fire to the vessel, hoping to be landed on an island. Captain Jernegan forced a con- fession from the guilty men, and then gave them their choice of hanging at once from a yard arm or being lashed in the rigging to burn if the ship burned; they chose to be lashed in the rigging. For days the fire smouldered and crept below decks. Another whaler, the Jireh Swift, stood by; but Captain Jernegan and his wife and child remained aboard the Mason. The ship seemed doomed; but at last a storm did what the crew could not accomplish, and, careening and sloshing with the water inside her and the seas outside, the Mason was saved.
Captain Jernegan had taken the first American vessel into a Japa- nese port after Perry opened the nation, and the captain's wife was the first white woman to set foot on Japanese soil.
Home at Edgartown with a comfortable fortune, the captain was elected representative in the General Court in 1871 and 1872. And casting about for an enterprise on the land to assure the future for Edgartown, he had seen the unfolding of a fair vision at Katama.
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In the plan he interested Capt. Grafton N. Collins and the Hon. E. P. Carpenter, whose triumphant direction of the affairs of the Oak Bluffs Company had placed him in high respect.
The preliminary meeting for organization of the new Katama Land Company was held on Monday, April 15, 1872, Mr. Carpenter being chosen chairman, and Joel H. Hills secretary. The corporation had permission to hold 1,200 acres of land at Edgartown, to build wharves and hotels, to operate steamboats. The capital was fixed at $50,000, with provision for increasing it to $150,000; par value of shares was set at $100, but no individual subscriptions were taken for less than $1,000. Reports spread that the stock was already quoted at $110, and that applications had been received to cover about a thousand shares.
The company actually began operations (irrespective of its charter rights) with six hundred acres of land at Katama, for which it had paid $14,000. A site for a hotel was selected at once-on the extend- ing curve of land well down Katama Bay-and it was announced that twenty-five cottages had been pledged already, to be built in the season of 1872.
"All hail Katama" ! said the Vineyard Gazette. "May your success be golden"!
A stockholders' meeting was held at the Parker house in New Bedford for the perfecting of a permanent organization. Mr. Carpen- ter became president, Andrew G. Pierce of New Bedford-represent- ing the interest of the New Bedford steamboat company-vice presi- dent, Joel H. Hills clerk, Joseph Thaxter Peaseof Edgartown treasurer, and Captain Jernegan agent. The directors were Mr. Carpenter, Mr. Pierce, Mr. Hills, Captain Jernegan, Captain Collins, Laban Pratt of Bridgewater-a lumber dealer who was to supply materials for the wharf and hotel, and George W. Lobdell of Mattapoisett. The capital stock was increased-so soon !- to $100,000 and an assessment of fifty per cent was ordered at once, twenty-five per cent to be paid in by May 20, 1872. The meeting ratified the plans for the wharf and hotel.
At this time the hammers were still ringing at the Sea View in Oak Bluffs; what could be more dramatic or more characteristic of the energy and enterprise of Mr. Carpenter and the sea captains than
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to launch a second ambitious structure before the first was completed? Material for the Katama wharf arrived in May, and plans for the hotel drawn by S. F. Pratt of Boston were accepted.
The hotel was to take the form of a gate house at the head of the wharf; but this structure was not regarded as the principal hotel for Katama-that was to come later. The whole tract was surveyed at once by Robert Morris Copeland, author of the Oak Bluffs plan, and lots, avenues and parks were laid out. The directors voted to give Mr. Carpenter a lot upon which he began the construction of a cottage; again the history of Oak Bluffs was repeating itself.
Although work was pushed ahead, the summer came and passed and still the wharf was not completed. The Sea View opened in all its glory, and the distinguished guests steamed into Katama Bay on the steamer Martha's Vineyard, inspecting from their places at the rail the broad acres of the new resort. August flashed by, and the skies of fall, filled with tall clouds, looked down upon a large exca- vation for the gate house.
October arrived before arrangements had developed to the point of chartering the steamer Martha's Vineyard once more for an excursion of land hungry men and women to Katama for the sale and selection of lots. The opening sale, it was announced, was intend- ed especially to give stockholders an opportunity to choose lots for which they had already contracted and, in part, paid. Bids were to be received for the order of selection, the company counting on a premium for the waterfront and corner locations.
On the day of the excursion there was, unfortunately, an easterly wind which darkened the sky and sent shivers among the company of speculators. Rain came and blew across the unprotected plainland. The outlook was dismal, and the omen of the weather was fulfilled. Due to some error, inexplicable in later years, the plan sent down by Mr. Copeland was wrongly numbered, and the lots could not be located on the ground. Some fifty dampened prospective buyers made the best of an anticlimax and poked about, looking for lots which they would have selected, if selection had been possible.
The winter set in and ebbed away. On May 8, 1873, grasping an early opportunity, the Katama company chartered the steamer River Queen, and once more it was free passage to Katama the Lovely.
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The River Queen was a larger boat than the Martha's Vineyard, and had been used by President Lincoln as his private craft during the Civil War. Now the decks were to be comfortably packed with buy- ers of lots-but the promptness of the company in taking advantage of returning spring proved to be a mistake. Once again a north- easter darkened and blew, and rain fell in torrents from a bleak sky.
"It has seemed peculiarly unfortunate," said the Vineyard Gazette, "from the fact that a place like Katama-unreclaimed, so to speak- depends for its attractiveness in a great measure on a smiling sky, a peaceful sea, and a general complaisance of nature. We trust that pleasure-seekers from abroad may see the place once, free from the chilling influence of an easterly storm."
Nevertheless there was spirited bidding, and $3,600 was realized from the sale of rights. First choices ran as high as $325, and others dwindled as low as $5.
Arrangements were now made to give every passenger from Oak Bluffs to Katama, throughout the season, a coupon with each ticket. At the end of the summer there was to be a drawing, and three new cottages and two lots of land were to be presented to the holders of the lucky numbers. Thus, merely by visiting Katama one might become an owner.
As events fell out, not all the activity at Katama was that of the land company. The federal government, after long delay, had appro- priated funds for the digging of a channel from Katama Bay to the Atlantic, and under the direction of Major General G. K. Warren, two dredgers were cutting away at the dunes and banks. The pros- pective channel would not only aid the fisheries of Edgartown-which was its justification-but now, the Katama Company declared, "the space of half an hour will suffice to take a boat's company from the quiet Katama landing to the restless roll and rumble of the ocean, where bluefish and swordfish abound in their season."
The current advertisements of Edgartown's own resort develop- ment read as follows :
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Photograph courtesy of Miss Chloe Coffin
"It was a rather comely building in the manner of a chateau, an octagonal tower at one end, a high mansard gable at the other . The Mattakceset Lodge at Katama. The long open gallery was later enclosed. Through the first story, near where the horse is shown, a way opened to the wharf.
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KATAMA the LOVELY
The Katama Land Company offers for sale at low rates a large number of beautiful building lots by the sea, near Edgar- town. The Company has secured a level tract of six hundred acres, elevated twenty feet above tide, and including more land than all the really eligible lots in Vineyard Grove and vicinity. A substantial wharf in a perfectly land-locked harbor has been completed, with a large hotel, called
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