Villages

Wading into the Sag Harbor sewage problem circa 1925. The problem was still there 50 years later. Plus much more dredged from the newspaper of record’s deep past.

The flag of Belgium will fly over East Hampton Village Hall next Thursday to mark Victory in Europe Day, the day celebrating the surrender of Germany’s armed forces in World War II.

The Amagansett Life-Saving and Coast Guard Station Museum opens for the 2025 season on Saturday at 11 a.m. with tours and a performance of sea chanteys, followed by a wealth of events continuing into the fall.

Julius Dayton Parsons, who once ran the Springs General Store, posed for this formal portrait sometime in the 1860s or 1870s, judging from the background and props.

Hundreds of small mounds with holes, each the diameter of a pencil, surrounded me. Above them zigging, dark, smallish bees traced incomprehensible patterns through the air: cellophane bees.

Four submarines mysteriously appeared off Montauk, and a driver in a 24-hour endurance race at the county airport in Westhampton Beach was stopped in his tracks by, yes, a deer collision. And that’s just 1950.

A highlight among Springs landmarks, here is a storied eatery and watering hole that served countless of the hamlet’s residents, including the Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock.

In 1975 Clark Clifford, Lyndon Johnson’s former defense secretary, spoke locally and lowered the boom on Nixon and the Vietnam War. And more from The Star’s past reportage.

Most people go to the Elizabeth Morton Wildlife Refuge in Noyac, part of the National Wildlife Refuge system, to feed the friendly birds. On Saturday, however, 15 people showed up instead to rip invasive plants out of the ground.

A massive die-off of honeybees this winter marks “the first time in history that professionals lost more bees than hobbyists,” one beekeeper said. Bee experts are working to identify the cause of unprecedented losses that will be the biggest to hit honeybee colonies in U.S. history.

Tuesday is Earth Day, and there are a number of opportunities on the South Fork to celebrate and honor the planet as it contends with myriad environmental stresses.

Kim Quarty, who spent 17 years at the Peconic Land Trust, serving as its director of conservation planning, is the foundation’s new executive director.

Has a shocking crime that took place in East Hampton Village in 1955 finally been solved? Mayor Jerry Larsen believes it has, and he isn’t alone.

A record of payments Nathaniel Baker made, mostly as barter, to the heirs of Abraham Schellinger beginning in 1713.

After being closed to the public for more than a decade and with a yearslong renovation project deemed complete, Second House in Montauk, originally built in 1746 and replaced in 1797 following a fire, will soon reopen to the public.

Stepping into the new Sagaponack General Store, which reopened yesterday after being closed since 2020, is a sweet experience, and not just because there’s a soft-serve ice cream station on the left and what promises to be the biggest penny candy selection on the South Fork on your right, but because it’s like seeing an old friend who, after some struggle, made it big. Really, really big.

In 1950 a Southold attorney, twice dead, was brought back to life. And more tales, incredible and not-so-incredible, recorded in our venerable pages.

This photo from The Star’s archive shows firemen fighting flames hidden behind the facade of the Edwards Theater, which was destroyed.

The Montauk Library’s 2025-26 operating budget passed 93 to 16.

A theme of “Keep Calm and Carry On” may seem incongruous with the barrage of dire environmental statistics, but the 2025 State of the Bays report on Long Island’s waterways, delivered by Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, did include some encouraging though smaller-scale developments.

Wildfires abounded in 1900 and 1925, and in 2000 a blaze took the estate-section home of Chevy Chase’s parents.

In his new book, “The Angry Skies: A Physician’s Journey Into Cambodia’s Heart of Darkness,” Dr. Blake Kerr writes of his six trips to Cambodia, traveling to Khmer Rouge enclaves, meeting some of the architects of the genocide, and gathering information from victims and perpetrators of the atrocities there.

One of the four windmill arms at the historic Pantigo Mill, behind the Home, Sweet Home Museum, fell off in Thursday's storm. It will be repaired, but it may take a while before a contractor with the specialized knowledge for a project like that can get to it.

Hamptons Whodunit, a mystery and true-crime festival now in its third year in East Hampton Village, kicks off with a cocktail party at the Maidstone Club April 10 and continues with three days of discussions, tours, book signings, and interactive events.

Bridgehampton’s Atlantic House is an excellent example of the tradition of structural reuse hereabouts.

Construction of the new aquatic and cultural spaces at the Montauk Playhouse Community Center is slated to be done by the end of June, according to Sarah Iudicone, president of the Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation. The date for the public opening, however, is still up in the air.

It was a foggy day but a cheery one as the Montauk Friends of Erin's 63rd St. Patrick's Day Parade marked the unofficial start of the season on Sunday.

In 1950, farmers on the East End could take advantage of a new weather information service. In 1975, Sag Harbor Village officials got ribbed over their salaries. And, as always, much more.

The Nature Conservancy conducted two controlled burns this week at the Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island, one on Sunday and a second on Thursday, the first to be conducted there since 2011.

Durell Godfrey, The East Hampton Star’s longtime staff photographer and a fixture at community events from Montauk to Southampton, has once again been named one of New York State’s top photographers. At the New York Press Association’s annual conference last week in Saratoga Springs, The Star’s newsletter also repeated in winning first place in the Best Newsletter category, capping a successful awards season for the paper.