Martha's Vineyard

The Wampanoag called the island Noepe, "land amid the streams", and have lived on it for thousands of years; at the time of English settlement they numbered around 3,000. Aquinnah, at the western end, was one of the earliest places where whales were hunted, by Wampanoag harpooners long before commercial whaling. The English name dates from Bartholomew Gosnold's expedition of 1602, and in 1642 Thomas Mayhew's son, also Thomas, founded the first English settlement at Great Harbor, later Edgartown. The Mayhews were known for good relations with the Wampanoag and for respecting their land rights.

In the 19th century the island, like nearby Nantucket, grew rich on whaling, and sea captains and merchants built the houses that still line Edgartown's streets. From 1835 Methodists gathered each summer for camp meetings in an oak grove that became Wesleyan Grove; their tents turned into small, brightly painted cottages, and the settlement around them broke away from Edgartown in 1880 as Cottage City, renamed Oak Bluffs in 1907. After the railway reached Woods Hole in 1872, summer houses spread across the island. Freed Black families who came to work in the fisheries were followed by others from the mainland, and parts of Oak Bluffs have been summer communities for African American families since the early 20th century. Edgartown Harbor was recognised in 2020 as a site of the Underground Railroad.

The island had for generations an unusually high rate of hereditary deafness, and hearing and deaf islanders alike used Martha's Vineyard Sign Language. In 1974 Steven Spielberg filmed Jaws here, largely in Menemsha and Chilmark. The town of Gay Head took the Wampanoag name Aquinnah in 1997, ten years after the tribe gained federal recognition.

Each town has its own character. Oak Bluffs keeps the gingerbread cottages, the carousel and the island's nightlife; Edgartown is formal and maritime; Vineyard Haven is the working port; and up-island, West Tisbury, Chilmark and Aquinnah are rural, with farms and a fishing harbour at Menemsha. Islanders talk of going "down-island" or "up-island", and draw a firm line between the year-round community and the summer visitors.

Wampanoag culture is centred on Aquinnah, where members of the federally recognised tribe make up about a third of the town's voters and the tribe owns the clay cliffs. Oak Bluffs has long been a summer gathering place for African American families, whose beach on the town's shore, once pejoratively called "the Inkwell", took the name back as a mark of pride; the writer Dorothy West set her novel The Wedding among them. Portuguese American families, present since the whaling and fishing era, and a large, more recent Brazilian community are part of island life.

The island has long drawn writers, artists, politicians and entertainers as summer residents, and presidents have holidayed here, from Ulysses Grant's visit in 1874 to Barack Obama, who bought a house on the Edgartown Great Pond in 2019. The summer calendar is marked by Illumination Night in Wesleyan Grove and the agricultural fair in West Tisbury.

The year-round population was 20,530 in a 2023 report by the Martha's Vineyard Commission, up from 16,460 in 2010, and in summer the number of people on the island swells to more than 200,000. About 56 per cent of the island's homes are occupied only seasonally. Edgartown is the largest town by population and area, and the island makes up most of Dukes County.

Tourism now drives the economy, where whaling, fishing and farming once did, and much work is in maintaining and serving the summer houses, shops and restaurants. Balancing that economy with the island's ecology, and with the pressures of development, is a recurring subject of local debate.

The rhythm of the year is sharply seasonal. In summer the ferries are full, the roads and bike paths busy and the beaches crowded; the most crowded weekend is the Fourth of July. In winter many places close, the island's own community takes over again, and children from all six towns go on from their local schools to the regional high school in Oak Bluffs.

Seafood is the centre of island eating, as it is across coastal New England: clam chowder, the lobster roll, fried clams and fish landed in local harbours. Menemsha, the fishing village in Chilmark, is the classic place to eat seafood by the water and watch the sun go down over the sea.

West Tisbury's farms and the agricultural fair reflect a farming tradition that reaches back to colonial times, and summer brings local produce to island kitchens. Oak Bluffs' Circuit Avenue is the busiest strip for casual eating and ice cream, while Edgartown and Vineyard Haven have their own clusters of restaurants near the harbours.

Drinking rules vary by town. The three down-island towns allow all kinds of alcohol in restaurants and bars, but Chilmark is a dry town, where restaurants allow diners to bring their own wine or beer. Island life also mixes in other traditions: Portuguese American families have lived here since the whaling and fishing era, and a large Brazilian community has grown up more recently, while in summer the harbour towns fill with ice-cream counters and casual seafood places.