125 Years Ago 1900
From The East Hampton Star, June 29
The Fort Pond Bay scheme, which the late Austin Corbin believed would cut down the time between America and Europe by at least several hours, has been abandoned by the officials of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, the new owners of the Long Island Railroad. In dismissing the project of a steamship terminal at Montauk, the Pennsylvania officials determined that the scheme is impracticable.
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Miss Baden-Powell, sister of the hero of the Siege of Mafeking, keeps a collection of bees, birds and butterflies. Her chief pet is a wily old sparrow, who is her constant companion day and night. He is so well trained that he does not eat up the tame butterflies, though he sometimes must be tempted sorely to do so. Miss Baden-Powell has 170 fine specimens of Indian and Japanese butterflies, which she has bred.
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A vegetable bed which was invented by Sir Isaac Pitman is now growing very popular, especially among vegetarians. It consists of moss, ferns, flowers and hay. Physicians with herbal tendencies are warmly recommending its use. It is said to give out a scent like ozone, and is not only strengthening and refreshing generally, but, in addition, induces sound and healthy sleep, and thus is a remedy for insomnia.
100 Years Ago 1925
From The East Hampton Star, June 26
That East Hampton High School is rapidly growing larger is evidenced by the statistics from the annual report for the school year 1924-25, as compared with that of two years ago, 1922-23. The total number of pupils registered in the latter year was 640; during the year 1924-25 the number was 733. The average daily attendance of pupils in 1922-23 was 536; in 1924-25 it was 603. The academic registration in 1922-23 was 111 and in 1924-25, 171.
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It is definitely announced now that a $1,000 fireworks display will be given on the evening of July 4th, at the bathing beach, the same location as in years past.
A committee, including John Drew, Walter M. Keck, E.E. Jenkins, I.Y. Halsey, Ralph C. Frood and Felix Dominy, is now soliciting subscriptions for the fireworks fund, of which Mr. Dominy is treasurer.
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Mr. and Mrs. Albert Herter, who have been living in Tunisia for the past five months, are now at Versailles, where Mr. Herter is painting a War Memorial for the French Government. While in Tunisia, Mrs. Herter helped Mme. Lenoel, a French war widow, to organize a dispensary to treat the Arabs. This is a splendid work, for the Arabs are a fine old race living practically as they did hundreds of years ago.
75 Years Ago 1950
From The East Hampton Star, June 29
Montgomery Clift, the movie star seen recently at Edwards Theater in “The Big Lift,” and screenwriter Kevin McCarthy, en route to Montauk for a few days’ vacation, attended the Boy Scouts of America Strawberry Festival in Odd Fellows’ Hall on Tuesday night, after being shanghaied out of a local soft-drink emporium by the Scouts of Troop 102.
The Scouts promised to protect the screen star from autograph-hunting pests (barring of course a few of their own number).
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Guild Hall will start off its summer art schedule on Saturday, July 1, with two exhibitions which promise to be of great interest to people living in this area. In the Moran Gallery will be an exhibition by ten East Hampton Abstractionists; and in the Woodhouse Gallery, a watercolor show by four Southampton artists.
Since the 1870s East Hampton and vicinity has been the home of artists, and within the past five years their number has grown considerably. Many of the younger artists to have settled here recently are abstract painters, and it is this group, in part, that will have its first showing in the Moran Gallery.
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Early season activity indicates another record sports fishing year for the Montauk Yacht Club, according to Roland (Mickey) McCann, Secretary. The Club, which went into commission officially on June 15th with the renewal of its popular “Game-Fishing Decathlon,” embarked on the new season with club membership at a new high and all available dock space filled to capacity with member boats and charter sports fishermen.
50 Years Ago 1975
From The East Hampton Star, June 26
The Federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Nassau-Suffolk Regional Planning Board signed a $5.2 million contract this week for a comprehensive wastewater planning program of the two Counties, announced Lee Koppelman, the executive director of the Regional Planning Board.
Mr. Koppelman, who was unrestrainedly enthusiastic in speaking of the study, which is to be financed entirely by Federal funds through the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, said it was “the largest grant given thus far in Region Two [New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands] and the second largest in the country, next to Chicago’s.”
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“I’m being discriminated against,” a landlord complained Friday, “because I happen to rent to singles rather than large families.”
“You’re being asked because you live in a single-family residential neighborhood to rent to a single family,” Supervisor Judith Hope told him.
“We’re trying to prevent a business being operated in a residential zone,” added Richard Herrlin, a Republican Councilman.
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Unless the State Senate acts post-haste, a course it’s never shown an overwhelming predilection for, striped bass fishermen of the commercial and sports variety will have to work out their own form of peaceful co-existence on local beaches without State referees.
Assemblyman I. William Bianchi’s bill to regulate commercial and sports fishermen’s pursuit of the bass under a weekday-weekend priority system has passed the State Assembly. But it’s a rogue bill, apparently, without a companion bill before the Senate.
25 Years Ago 2000
From The East Hampton Star, June 29
For the first time in the more than 40 years that East Hampton Village has marked the Fourth of July with public pyrotechnics at Main Beach, no one will be allowed to drive cars or trucks onto the beaches to watch.
Erosion has created an unseasonably narrow shore from Two Mile Hollow to Georgica, making passage downright dangerous, especially in the dark of night, East Hampton Village Police Chief Glen F. Stonemetz Jr. said.
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Kiernan Kelly has seen it all.
The 22-year-old, now in his second and final year as a parking attendant at Sagg Main Beach in Sagaponack, has been offered as much as $50 for a resident permit, has shrugged off threats of bodily harm, and has been flashed by more than a dozen permit-less female beachgoers looking for somewhere to park.
“That happens weekly,” Mr. Kelly joked as a BMW convertible packed with six waving, giggling young women hurried past the 8-by-8-foot booth on a busy Saturday — with a sticker. “But mostly it’s just threats of violence.”
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Stuck in westbound traffic on Route 27 in East Hampton last summer, Nicholas Coch, a professor of geology who has studied hurricanes for 30 years, turned to his wife and remarked, “If this were an evacuation, we’d all be dead.”
In the worst case scenario, Dr. Coch and disaster experts fear a repeat of the great unnamed hurricane of mid-August 1635, which devastated New England.
