Collection: Eat Fire Spring (Wauwinet) Collection

Eat Fire Spring rises on the quiet bay side of Nantucket and is historically reported to have never run dry. The Wampanoag drank from it for centuries before European contact — the people of Natocket, the eastern branch of the Wôpanâak Nation, the "People of the First Light" — and the freshwater source it offered along what is today a dead-end dirt lane in the Wauwinet area, across the road from Polpis Harbor, made the surrounding corner of the island a settled place long before the proprietors arrived. The hamlet of Wauwinet itself is named for the sachem Wauwinet of the eastern Wampanoag, who, according to Zaccheus Macy's October 2, 1792 letter to the Massachusetts Historical Society, was "very old and much respected when the settlers arrived"; his son Nickanoose acted as his deputy, signed the May 10, 1660 head-sachem deed with Wanackmamack, and witnessed the June 22, 1662 conveyance of Pocomo Neck — the peninsula just across the water from the spring — to Tristram Coffin and Thomas Macy. The 1659 purchase had been the famous one: on July 2 of that year Thomas Mayhew sold nine-tenths of his interest in Nantucket to a group of investors led by Tristram Coffin for thirty pounds and two beaver hats, one for Mayhew and one for his wife. The first English settlement went up that year at Capaum Pond at the west end of the island, but the spring on the bay-side corner stayed in continuous use through the 17th and 18th centuries, and the Wampanoag community on Nantucket lasted until an unknown epidemic reduced the population by half in the winter of 1763-64. The first lighthouse on the island was built at Brant Point in 1746 — the second-oldest in America — and Great Point Light went up at Sandy Point in 1784 in wood, was burned down in 1816, was rebuilt in stone in 1818, was taken by a March 1984 storm, and was replaced by the present 60-foot concrete-and-rubblestone replica on September 7, 1986. Sankaty Head Light was first lit on February 1, 1850 with a second-order Fresnel lens from Henry-Lepaute of Paris — the first lighthouse in the United States with a Fresnel lens as part of its original equipment — and was moved 400 feet inland from the eroding bluff by the 'Sconset Trust on October 10, 2007. The Wauwinet House opened on the bay shore in 1875. The Haulover, the narrow strip of dunes just north of Wauwinet where fishermen hauled their boats overland from the harbor to the Atlantic for more than a century, was breached by a winter storm in January 1896 and finally closed again in 1908 to form the tidal Haulover Pond. The spring is still here.

What's with the spring that never ran dry? The name is part of the credential, and the rest is geology and memory. Nantucket sits on a sandy moraine over an old glacial lens of fresh water, and the lens rises closest to the surface along the bay-side ridge where Eat Fire Spring crosses the low ground above Polpis Harbor. Indigenous oral tradition, and the early settlers who came after, agreed on the basic fact: the spring stayed wet when other sources went seasonal, which is why the eastern Wampanoag drank from it and why the lane carries its name. The "Eat Fire" half of the name is older than the written record, and the early island histories don't gloss it precisely; what is documented is the water itself, the spring that ran through droughts, and the cedar-and-bayberry corner of the moor that held its damp ground when the rest of the island was dry.

The Wampanoag history of the eastern corner of the island sits behind everything else. Two head sachems governed Nantucket at the time of the 1659 purchase: Wanackmamack in the southeast and Wauwinet (with his deputy son Nickanoose) in the northeast. Wanackmamack's territory ran roughly from Toupchue Pond in the south through Gibbs' Pond and over toward Polpis Swamp and Sesachacha Pond; Wauwinet's ran across the bay-side corner that bears his name. Female sachems were not unusual in Wampanoag governance — Askammapoo, Nickanoose's daughter, became queen sachem and a broker between her people and the English, and Wunnatuckquannumou ruled on Nantucket alongside her. The 1660 head-sachem deed and the 1662 Pocomo Neck conveyance, both witnessed by Peter Folger — surveyor, interpreter, grandfather of Benjamin Franklin — are the documentary record of how the eastern corner of the island moved from sachem to proprietor; the population numbers on the island stayed weighted toward the Wampanoag for more than a century afterward, with Wampanoag men later forming half or more of the crews on Nantucket whaling ships.

The federal-era lighthouse history is the second layer. Brant Point Light in the harbor went up in 1746, the second-oldest light in America. Great Point — formerly Sandy Point — was lit in 1784 in wood under former whaler and chart-maker Captain Paul Pinkham; the wooden tower burned in 1816 and was replaced by the 1818 stone tower that stood until a March 1984 storm took it down. Senator Edward Kennedy led a $2 million campaign to build the replica, and the 60-foot concrete-and-rubblestone tower — incorporating some material from the 1818 light — was dedicated on September 7, 1986 with Kennedy raising a flag, smashing a bottle of champagne against the new tower, and declaring "Great Point is alive and well again." Sankaty Head Light, on the bluff at the eastern edge of the island in Siasconset, was Congressionally appropriated in 1848, built in 1849 under engineer Benjamin Franklin Isherwood (later Chief Engineer of the U.S. Navy in the Civil War), and first lit on February 1, 1850 by keeper Alexander D. Bunker with a second-order Fresnel lens from Henry-Lepaute of Paris — the first lighthouse in the United States with a Fresnel lens as part of its original equipment. The 70-foot brick-and-granite tower with its red central band flashes every 7.5 seconds, was electrified in 1933, was transferred to the U.S. Coast Guard in 1944, was automated in 1965, was listed on the National Register in 1987, and was moved 400 feet inland from the eroding bluff by the 'Sconset Trust on October 10, 2007 by International Chimney of Buffalo, New York, in a ten-day operation funded by donors and the 'Sconset Trust board. The Wauwinet House opened on the bay in 1875 and was the scene of a 163-person shore dinner on June 17, 1876 — clam chowder, boiled lobster, pastry, then quadrants, polkas, and waltzes — reported in the Inquirer and Mirror that summer.

The Haulover — the narrow strip of dunes just north of Wauwinet — is the working-coast layer of the same corner. From the early 1800s into the mid-1900s, Nantucket fishermen pulled their dories up onto the harbor side and dragged them overland to the Atlantic to save the long sail north around Great Point. Decades of that dragging eventually wore a shallow trench across the dunes, and on a January night in 1896 a winter storm punched through the trench and opened a 15-foot-deep breach that severed Coatue and Great Point from the rest of Nantucket. A catboat called the Inaz was the first to sail through the new opening; the breach stayed open for thirteen years, widening to a quarter-mile at its widest, before the heavier soils at Coskata Woods slowed the northward erosion and the south side caught up, closing the cut by 1908 and forming the tidal Haulover Pond. Coskata-Coatue Wildlife Refuge, the National Natural Landmark north of Wauwinet, is held today across four parcels — the Trustees of Reservations, the Nantucket Conservation Foundation, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — and runs more than five miles north from the Wauwinet Gatehouse at 111 Wauwinet Road to the Great Point Light. The Cedars, the red cedar maritime forest along the Head of the Harbor inside Coskata, is the largest of its kind in New England. The Galls, the narrow isthmus south of Great Point that overwashes in big storms, briefly made Great Point a true island again during the No-Name Storm of October 30, 1991.

Our Eat Fire Spring emblem is built from coastal essentials: a flame rising over stylized waves, with a hidden fork carved into the center of the design. The fire references the name itself; the fork anchors the identity in food and shared table; the waterline points to bay, harbor, dune, and the salt-air setting of the corner. The badge holds like a classic harbor stamp and stays crisp on embroidery and small prints, and on merchandise the design reads as island heat over ocean cool — a quiet-corner signature for sunrise walkers, the bay-side morning, and the meal that tastes better because the wind earned it.

Today the bay-side corner is, above everything, a quiet place by Nantucket standards: the spring still rising along Eat Fire Spring Road, the Wampanoag and proprietor names still on the hamlets (Wauwinet, Pocomo, Quidnet, Squam, Polpis, Siasconset), the 1850 Sankaty Light two miles southeast, the 1986 Great Point Light five miles north up the Haulover sand, and the 3,220 acres of Middle Moors heathland to the southwest with Altar Rock at the heart of it. Our Eat Fire Spring designs are made for that geography — a freshwater spring that kept its word, a sachem whose name held the corner, two great federal lights, a working-coast portage that the sea opened and closed again, and a National Natural Landmark of dune and cedar and bay just north of the gatehouse.

Eat Fire Spring (Wauwinet) — Travel Guide

Visiting the Quiet Corner of Nantucket Today

Eat Fire Spring and Wauwinet sit on the northeast coast of Nantucket, on the bay side between Polpis Harbor and the open Atlantic, 4.7 miles north-northwest of Siasconset. The high season runs late May through September with high-60s to mid-80s daytime temperatures and ocean-cooled evenings; the shoulder weeks in May and October are the locals' favorite for fewer cars and longer light on the moors. Hurricane and nor'easter season runs September through November. Distances look short on a map but the bay-side experience stretches out — you stop, you watch, you wait for the weather to lift.

Where to Stay

The Wauwinet (the 1875 inn on the bay) is the premier destination on this corner of the island and is the natural basecamp for a quiet-luxury Nantucket stay. Among the smaller in-town options, the early-20c-era town hotels remain the alternative for those who want to be closer to Steamboat Wharf. Whichever you choose, the bay-side rhythm is the same: long sunrise walks, soft-distance horizons, and a deliberate remove from the louder downtown lanes.

• Stay at The Wauwinet — the historic 1875 inn on Nantucket Bay, the premier destination on this corner of the island, with two private beaches (Atlantic side and bay side) and the only Relais & Châteaux property on Nantucket.
• Dine at TOPPER'S — the restaurant at The Wauwinet, bay-side dining with a long wine program.

The Spring, the Lights, the Haulover, and the Moors

For visitors searching for things to do in the Wauwinet–Eat Fire Spring corner:

• Bay-side sunrise walks at Wauwinet and Pocomo — early light over calmer Nantucket Bay water, the signature move on this corner of the island.
• Polpis Harbor — sheltered water across the road from Eat Fire Spring, with deeded public access points and a gentle paddle for kayaks and small boats.
• Sankaty Head Light, Siasconset — the 70-foot brick-and-granite tower with the red central band, two miles southeast of Wauwinet on Baxter Road in 'Sconset; flashes every 7.5 seconds, visible 25 miles at sea. Grounds open year-round; tower interior open select summer days via the 'Sconset Trust.
• Great Point Light and Coskata-Coatue Wildlife Refuge — the 1986 replica light at the northernmost tip of Nantucket, reached by over-sand vehicle through the Wauwinet Gatehouse at 111 Wauwinet Road (Trustees of Reservations beach-access permit required) or by guided natural-history tour. Five-plus miles of dune, cedar, oak, and salt marsh north from the gatehouse.
• The Haulover — the historic carry between Nantucket Bay and the Atlantic, just north of Wauwinet, where 19th-century fishermen dragged dories overland. The 1896 storm cut, the 1908 closure, and the resulting Haulover Pond are all visible in the dune topography today.
• Altar Rock and the Middle Moors — the rock-marked hilltop in the Nantucket Conservation Foundation's 3,220-acre heathland, southwest of Wauwinet via Polpis Road, with panoramic views across the island. The contiguous moor protects the Pout Ponds, Wigwam Pond, and the long sweep of low heath.
• Sesachacha Pond and Quidnet Beach — Nantucket's largest kettle pond at 43 feet deep, breached spring and fall, with the Mass Audubon Sesachacha Heathlands Wildlife Sanctuary surrounding most of its shore. Quidnet Beach on the Atlantic side has calm shallow water and a long view south to Sankaty Head Light.
• Polpis Road bike path — the eight-mile paved path from town out to Siasconset, with a spur toward Wauwinet and easy access to the moors, the Lifesaving Museum, and Altar Rock trailheads.

Getting Here

Nantucket Memorial Airport (ACK) is the regional airport on the south side of the island, twenty minutes by car from Wauwinet. Cape Air runs year-round flights from Boston (BOS), Hyannis (HYA), Martha's Vineyard (MVY), New York (JFK and EWR in season), Providence (PVD), and White Plains (HPN). The Steamship Authority operates the year-round car-and-passenger ferry from Hyannis (about 2 hours 15 minutes; high-speed passenger service in 1 hour) and is the only line that takes vehicles. Hy-Line Cruises runs high-speed passenger ferries from Hyannis year-round and seasonal service from Martha's Vineyard. From the Steamboat Wharf in town it's about 25 minutes by car or taxi out Polpis Road to Wauwinet Road and the bay-side corner.

Why People Come Here

The Wauwinet–Eat Fire Spring corner is the quiet edge of Nantucket. Visitors come for sunrise on the bay, for the long over-sand run up to Great Point, for the silence of the moors, and for the sense that the island still keeps a corner where the wind, the water, and the heath have the loudest voice. The spring still rises along its road. The sachem's name still holds the hamlet. The two great federal lights still throw their beams north and east. And the freshwater corner that the People of the First Light drank from is still here, three and a half centuries after the proprietors put thirty pounds and two beaver hats on the table.

Nantucket is the consolidated town and county at the southeasternmost point of Massachusetts, thirty miles south of Cape Cod across the open sound, and it became English on July 2, 1659 when Thomas Mayhew sold his interest in the island to a group of nine investors led by Tristram Coffin for thirty pounds and two beaver hats — one for Mayhew and one for his wife. The Wôpanâak people had lived on Natocket for more than twelve thousand years before that document was signed; the name Natocket means "the far away land," and the Eastern Wampanoag who held the island in the 17th century governed it under two head sachems, with Wanackmamack in the south and Wauwinet (later succeeded by his son Nickanoose) in the north and east. The May 10, 1660 head-sachem deed between Wanackmamack, Nickanoose, and the proprietors was witnessed by Peter Folger — surveyor, interpreter, and grandfather of Benjamin Franklin — and the June 22, 1662 conveyance of Pocomo Neck added the bay-side corner to the English settlement. The first English town went up at Capaum Pond at the west end of the island in 1659, was incorporated in 1671 under Governor Lovelace of New York (who appointed Tristram Coffin first Chief Magistrate), and was called Sherburne for more than a century. On June 8, 1795, Governor Samuel Adams signed Micajah Coffin's bill renaming it the Town of Nantucket. The 1686 Jethro Coffin House on Sunset Hill — built as a wedding present for Jethro Coffin and Mary Gardner — still stands as the oldest residence on the island and was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 24, 1968. Brant Point Light, the second-oldest lighthouse in America, was lit in 1746 at the entrance to Nantucket Harbor; the Old Mill on Prospect Street, the oldest functioning windmill in the United States according to local tradition, was built the same year. The 18th and early 19th centuries made Nantucket the whaling capital of the world: the November 20, 1820 sinking of the Nantucket whaleship Essex by an 85-foot sperm whale 1,300 nautical miles west of the Galápagos — and Owen Chase's 1821 Narrative of the survivors' 90-day ordeal — became the source material for Herman Melville's Moby-Dick in 1851. The July 13, 1846 Great Fire destroyed 40 acres of downtown, fueled by whale oil and lumber on the wharves, and the post-fire reconstruction in brick and cobblestone is the streetscape visitors see today. On the clear cold night of October 1, 1847, the 29-year-old Nantucket librarian and astronomer Maria Mitchell discovered Comet C/1847 T1 — Miss Mitchell's Comet — from the roof of the Pacific Bank on Main Street with her father's three-inch Dollond refracting telescope; she became the first American to discover a comet, received the King of Denmark's gold medal in 1848, and the same year was elected the first woman Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Sankaty Head Light was first lit on February 1, 1850. The Nantucket Historical Association was founded in 1894. The Maria Mitchell Association was founded in 1902. On December 13, 1966, the Nantucket Historic District was designated a National Historic Landmark District — the entire island expanded under the designation in 1975. The Christmas Stroll began in 1973. The Daffodil Festival began in 1975. In 2021, the Annual Town Meeting voted to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People's Day. Nantucket is the only county in the United States that is also a single town and a single island.

What's with the two beaver hats? The clause in the 1659 deed of sale — "thirty pounds and two beaver hats, one for myself and one for my wife" — is the most quoted phrase in Nantucket history and the most often misread. Beaver felt was the dominant fine-hat material of 17th-century Atlantic trade, and a well-made beaver hat in 1659 was a serious item of personal property — not a token, but a small luxury that signaled standing. Thomas Mayhew was a Watertown Puritan in his sixties at the time of the sale; he had held the English proprietary rights to Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, the Elizabeth Islands, and adjacent islands since 1641 under grants from Sir Ferdinando Gorges and the Earl of Stirling, and he sold his Nantucket interest while retaining one-tenth and his religious authority over the Wampanoag missions. The two beaver hats — one for him, one for his wife Jane Paine — were the dignified personal supplement to the thirty-pound cash price, and they sit in the deed as a reminder that the transaction was negotiated between specific people, not between abstractions. The phrase has stuck for three and a half centuries because it carries the whole transaction in one detail: the cash, the courtesy, the husband, the wife, the Puritan settler with land rights from the Crown, and the nine Massachusetts and Salisbury investors who would build the town that would build the whaling fleet that would supply the world with light.

The Wampanoag history of the island sits behind everything that followed. The People of the First Light lived on Natocket for more than twelve thousand years before European contact, and the Eastern Wampanoag community on the island remained sizable through the 17th and early 18th centuries — Wampanoag men formed half or more of the crews on early Nantucket whaling ships, and Wampanoag women wove the rush mats, twined the cordage, and worked the shellfisheries that supplied the early town. An unknown epidemic in 1763–1764 reduced the Nantucket Wampanoag community by 222 people, and Abram Quary (d. 1854) and Dorcas Honorable (d. 1855) are remembered as the last recognized Nantucket Wampanoag of the historic community. The sachem names — Wauwinet on the northeast corner, Wanackmamack in the south, Nickanoose succeeding his father, Askammapoo as queen sachem and broker between her people and the English — are on the hamlets, the roads, the harbors, and the ponds. In 2021 the Annual Town Meeting voted to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People's Day, and the Wôpanâak heritage of Natocket is part of the island's contemporary identity.

The whaling capital era was the engine of everything else. Nantucket-based whaleships ranged the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian Ocean across the 18th and early 19th centuries, and the island's harbor was the busiest whaling port in the world for most of that span. The Essex sailed from Nantucket on August 12, 1819 under Captain George Pollard Jr. and first mate Owen Chase; in the Pacific on November 20, 1820, an 85-foot sperm whale rammed and sank the ship 1,300 nautical miles from the nearest land. The twenty crewmen took to three whaleboats with little water and almost no food; eight survived the 90-day ordeal, including Pollard, Chase, and the 15-year-old cabin boy Thomas Nickerson, whose own diary was discovered in 1960. Owen Chase's 1821 Narrative was the first published account, and Herman Melville, who met Pollard on Nantucket in 1852 after Moby-Dick was already published, called him "the most impressive man, tho' wholly unassuming, even humble — that I ever encountered." The wharves of Nantucket processed millions of gallons of whale oil and spermaceti through the early 1840s; the New Bedford fleet eventually overtook Nantucket's because of the deeper New Bedford harbor and the Nantucket bar that limited the size of ships, but the Nantucket whaling tradition produced the language, the captains, the merchant houses, and the buildings that define the island's historic core. The Hadwen House at 96 Main Street — Greek Revival, built in 1846 by whaling merchant and silver retailer William Hadwen — was the peak architectural expression of that prosperity, and the 1847 Hadwen & Barney Oil and Candle Factory on Broad Street is today the core of the Nantucket Whaling Museum.

The Great Fire of July 13, 1846 nearly ended the town. The fire began that evening in a hat shop on Main Street, spread through the whale-oil casks and lumber on the wharves, and burned 40 acres of downtown overnight — every business on Main Street, most of the wharves, and a third of the town's buildings. The Atheneum, founded in 1834 as the island's library and lyceum, was rebuilt first in Greek Revival form and reopened the following year, and the cobblestone Main Street that visitors see today is the post-fire reconstruction. The fire and the rise of the New Bedford fleet together broke the whaling economy on Nantucket, and by 1869 the last whaling ship had sailed from the island. The depopulation that followed — the population fell from a peak of 9,012 in 1840 to about 3,000 by 1870 — is the reason so much of the 18th- and early-19th-century architecture survived intact. There was no money to tear it down and replace it. By the time the summer-resort era arrived in the late 19th century, the island was a preserved historic landscape almost by accident.

Maria Mitchell is the second great Nantucket story. Born August 1, 1818, the third of ten children in a Quaker family, she was educated at her father William's school and then at Cyrus Peirce's School for Young Ladies, became librarian of the Atheneum at 18, and spent her evenings on the roof of the Pacific Bank — where her father served as principal officer — sweeping the night sky with a three-inch Dollond refracting telescope. At 10:50 p.m. on October 1, 1847, she identified a faint smudge five degrees above Polaris that wasn't on her star chart. She told her father; he wrote to William Bond at Harvard the next day; the discovery was confirmed; and Comet C/1847 T1 entered the record as "Miss Mitchell's Comet." King Christian VIII of Denmark, completing the standing offer made by King Frederick VI, awarded her a gold medal in 1848 — the first American to receive it — and the same year the American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected her its first woman Fellow. Mitchell went on to become the first female professional astronomer in the United States (computer of the Nautical Almanac), the first professor of astronomy at the new Vassar College in 1865, and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She died June 28, 1889. The Maria Mitchell Association, founded on her childhood block on Vestal Street in 1902, preserves her birthplace, runs the Maria Mitchell Observatory and Aquarium, and is the institutional memory of Nantucket's contribution to American science.

The Quaker abolitionist tradition is the third inheritance. Slavery was abolished on Nantucket in 1773 — among the earliest such acts in the colonies — and the Society of Friends meetinghouse on Fair Street became one of the centers of New England Quaker abolition. Lucretia Coffin Mott, born on Nantucket in 1793, was one of the foremost women's rights advocates and abolitionists of the 19th century and co-author of the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls. The free African American neighborhood called New Guinea or Newtown grew up on the southwest outskirts of the town near Mill Hill, and the 1824 York and Pleasant Streets school-church-meetinghouse — acquired by the Museum of African American History in 1999 — is a surviving structure of that community. On the evening of August 11, 1841, the 23-year-old Frederick Douglass, then three years out of slavery, addressed his first largely white audience at an anti-slavery convention held at the Atheneum. He later wrote that he had stood "trembling in every limb" but had been heard. Ralph Waldo Emerson lectured in the same hall; William Lloyd Garrison spoke from the steps; Sojourner Truth visited Maria Mitchell's home. The Nantucket Underground Railroad operated through these networks, and the island's Quaker abolitionists were active in the broader New England movement through the 1840s and 1850s.

The Nantucket Lightship Basket is the craft tradition that the island carried into the 20th century. The form developed aboard the South Shoal Lightship — anchored 24 miles southeast of Sankaty Head from 1854 to 1983 to mark the dangerous Nantucket Shoals — where lightship crewmen, working two-month tours of duty, wove rattan baskets over wooden moulds during the long calm watches. Captain Charles Ray (1798–1884), the South Shoal's captain, is credited with making the first purse-style baskets, and the craft moved ashore through the late 19th century, becoming the recognized Nantucket form: rattan reeds woven over a solid wood base, an odd number of staves, woven over a mould, with a turned wooden bottom and ear-and-handle. The Nantucket Lightship Basket Museum at 49 Union Street is the dedicated museum of the craft tradition. Captain Charles Ray's 19th-century origin work and the South Shoal Lightship history sit in the public domain; the 20th-century evolution of the form into the lidded handbag is a more recent development in the craft.

The institutional preservation of Nantucket dates from the 1890s. The Nantucket Historical Association was founded in 1894, the Old Siasconset Golf Course the same year. Automobiles were banned on Nantucket town roads from 1900 to 1918 — a vote that locals took, lost, took again, and won — and the narrow-gauge Nantucket Railroad ran from town out to Surfside from 1881 and on to Siasconset by 1884 (the line was scrapped for the war effort in 1917). The 1929 NHA acquisition of the Hadwen & Barney Oil and Candle Factory created the core of the Whaling Museum, expanded with the 1971 Peter Foulger Museum, and reopened in 2005 after the major expansion that built Gosnell Hall and put the 46-foot sperm whale skeleton — assembled from a 1998 New Year's Day stranding at Low Beach — at the heart of the institution. The 1846 Hadwen House at 96 Main Street was donated to the NHA in 1963 by Jean Satler Williams and opened as a house museum in 1964. The 1805 Old Gaol on Vestal Street served as the island jail until 1933. The 1827 Coffin School on Winter Street, established by Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin to educate descendants of Tristram Coffin, was reconstituted in 1854. The Nantucket Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum on Polpis Road carries the rescue history of the shoals.

The contemporary cultural calendar is built on two great festivals, both born in the 1970s. The Nantucket Christmas Stroll, founded in 1973 by a Chamber of Commerce committee of Helen Burke, Millie Taylor, Mimi Congdon, and Dorothy Tonkin, fills the cobblestone streets on the first weekend of December with carolers, costumed strollers, sea-chantey singers, and the lighting of the Main Street trees. The Nantucket Daffodil Festival, founded in 1975 by Jean MacAusland and the Nantucket Garden Club — with the first show held May 2, 1975 at the Boys & Girls Club with 250 entries — fills the last weekend of April with more than a million daffodil blooms along Main Street, an antique car parade out to 'Sconset, and the famous Sconset Tailgate Picnic on the bluff. The downtown historic core remains, by every careful measure, one of the most intact 18th- and 19th-century American towns; the cobblestone Main Street, the brick storefronts above it, the Pacific Bank on the corner where Maria Mitchell did her sky-sweeping, and the Greek Revival Atheneum a block away are the same buildings that Frederick Douglass and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Lucretia Mott and Maria Mitchell walked past in the 1840s. The 1966 National Historic Landmark District designation, expanded to encompass the entire island in 1975, was the federal recognition of what the depopulation and the islanders' care had together preserved.

The geography itself is its own credential. The island measures roughly 14 miles east to west and 3.5 miles north to south, with Tuckernuck (1,000 acres, purchased by the Coffins from Mayhew on October 10, 1659 for five pounds) and Muskeget (small, inhabited only by seals) lying off the west end. Saul's Hill at 102 feet is among the highest points on the island, with Altar Rock at 100 feet and Sankaty Head at 92 feet close behind. Nantucket Sound — the triangular region of ocean between Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and Cape Cod — is the working water of the region. The villages and hamlets around the island read like a 17th-century Wampanoag-and-proprietor gazetteer: Madaket at the west end, Surfside on the south shore (the southernmost settlement in Massachusetts), Miacomet in the south-central, Polpis in the northeast (official spelling set by the Board on Geographic Names in 1900), Quidnet on the Atlantic side near Sesachacha Pond, Wauwinet on the bay-side northeast corner, and Siasconset — 'Sconset — on the eastern edge with its rose-covered cottages and the Sconset Bluff Walk above the Atlantic.

Nantucket Logo Apparel Collection

Nantucket — Travel Guide

Visiting Nantucket Today

Nantucket is the consolidated town and county on the island thirty miles south of Cape Cod, reachable by ferry from Hyannis or by air to Nantucket Memorial Airport (ACK). The high season runs late May through early October with high-60s to mid-80s daytime temperatures and Atlantic-cooled evenings. The shoulder weeks of April–May (around the Daffodil Festival) and September–early November (the Cranberry Festival and the harbor races) are favorites for fewer cars, more parking, and easier dinner reservations. December's Christmas Stroll weekend is the great winter event. The island is a National Historic Landmark District in its entirety, and visitors can plan a multi-day stay around walking the cobblestone downtown, biking the paved paths, and reaching the outer villages by car.

Historic Downtown Nantucket

The cobblestone Main Street is the spine of the National Historic Landmark District, lined with the brick storefronts that went up after the 1846 fire and the surviving 18th-century frame houses on the side lanes. Visitors orient themselves at the Pacific Bank on the corner — the building from whose roof Maria Mitchell discovered her comet — and walk a few blocks in any direction to find the great institutions of the town.

• Nantucket Whaling Museum, 13 Broad Street — the Nantucket Historical Association's flagship, housed in the 1847 Hadwen & Barney Oil and Candle Factory acquired in 1929, expanded with the 1971 Peter Foulger Museum, reopened in 2005 after the major expansion. The 46-foot sperm whale skeleton in Gosnell Hall, the 1847 lever press, the scrimshaw collection, and the rooftop observation deck looking out over the harbor are the headline experiences.
• Nantucket Atheneum, 1 India Street — the island's Greek Revival library, rebuilt first after the 1846 fire, with the Great Hall that hosted Frederick Douglass's first speech to a largely white audience in 1841 and lectures by Emerson, Garrison, and Thoreau.
• Hadwen House, 96 Main Street — the 1846 Greek Revival mansion of whaling merchant William Hadwen, donated to the NHA in 1963 and opened as a house museum in 1964, with period rooms and the formal garden.
• Jethro Coffin House (the Oldest House), Sunset Hill Road — the 1686 wedding-present house, oldest residence on Nantucket, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1968.
• Old Mill, 50 Prospect Street — the 1746 windmill, oldest functioning mill in the United States according to local tradition, with seasonal grain-grinding demonstrations.
• Old Gaol, 15 Vestal Street — the 1805 oak-and-iron-bolt island jail, in service until 1933.
• Quaker Meetinghouse, Fair Street — the historic Society of Friends meetinghouse at the center of the abolitionist tradition.
• Coffin School, Winter Street — the 1827 school founded by Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, reconstituted in 1854.
• Nantucket Lightship Basket Museum, 49 Union Street — the dedicated museum of the lightship basket tradition.
• Museum of African American History — 1824 York and Pleasant Streets school-church-meetinghouse — the surviving New Guinea/Newtown structure, acquired by MAAH in 1999, telling the story of the free African American community.
• Maria Mitchell Association, Vestal Street — the 1902 institution that preserves Mitchell's childhood home, the Maria Mitchell Observatory, the Maria Mitchell Aquarium, and the natural-science buildings.
• Civil War Soldiers Monument, Milk Street — the granite obelisk: "Eternal honor to the sons of Nantucket who, by land and sea, gave their lives to preserve a united country 1861–1865."

The Outer Villages and Beaches

Beyond downtown, the island spreads out into hamlets and beaches that each carry their own character:

• Siasconset ('Sconset) — the eastern village, home of Sankaty Head Light, the rose-covered cottages of Baxter Road, the Sconset Bluff Walk above the Atlantic, the 1894 Old Siasconset Golf Course, and the Sconset Casino. The Polpis Road bike path connects 'Sconset back to town.
• Madaket — the western village, famous for sunsets across the open ocean toward the Madaket sandbars and Tuckernuck and Muskeget. Millie's at Madaket Beach is a long-running casual dining option.
• Surfside — the south-shore village, the southernmost settlement in Massachusetts, with the 1874 Surfside Lifesaving Station and a long Atlantic beach with breaking surf.
• Miacomet — the south-central village, with the long Miacomet Pond and Miacomet Beach on the open Atlantic.
• Polpis — the northeast hamlet 3.5 miles northwest of 'Sconset, with the Nantucket Shipwreck & Lifesaving Museum on Polpis Road.
• Children's Beach — the calm, family-oriented harbor-side beach a short walk north of Steamboat Wharf, with the bandstand, the small playground, and the harbormaster's office.
• Jetties Beach — the harbor-side beach a mile north of town, calm water, kayak and paddleboard rentals, the seasonal Sandbar restaurant, and the stone jetties from which it takes its name.
• Brant Point Beach — the small beach at the foot of Brant Point Light, the traditional first sight of the island for arriving ferry passengers.
• Nobadeer Beach — the wide south-shore beach near the airport with strong Atlantic surf.
• Cisco Beach — the surf beach on the southwest shore, the home of the Nantucket surfing community and Cisco Brewers a mile inland.
• Altar Rock and the Middle Moors — the 3,220-acre Nantucket Conservation Foundation heathland in the center of the island, accessible from Polpis Road, with panoramic views.
• Sesachacha Pond and Quidnet Beach — the largest kettle pond on the island and its calm-water Atlantic beach.

Festivals, Food, and the Year

Nantucket's festival calendar carries the year. The Daffodil Festival on the last weekend of April fills Main Street with more than a million blooms, an antique car parade out to 'Sconset, and the Sconset Tailgate Picnic on the bluff. Figawi Race Weekend over Memorial Day brings the Hyannis-to-Nantucket sailboat race and the island's unofficial start of summer. The Nantucket Wine & Food Festival in May draws chefs and producers from around the country. The Nantucket Film Festival in late June is a serious screenwriting-focused festival. The Opera House Cup regatta in mid-August is the great wooden-boat race. The Cranberry Festival in mid-October at the Milestone Bog celebrates the island's surviving cranberry industry. The Christmas Stroll on the first weekend of December is the great winter event — costumed strollers, carolers, sea-chantey singers, the lighting of the Main Street trees, and the Talking Christmas Tree on Federal Street. Restaurants on the island range from Brant Point Grill and the Boarding House to The Languedoc, the Straight Wharf, the Pearl, Cru on Straight Wharf, and Black-Eyed Susan's; Bartlett's Farm at the south end of the island has been growing produce since 1830 and is the country's oldest family-run farm. The island's water is supplied by the sandy moraine and the glacial lens; the air is brackish with bay and Atlantic salt; and the cottages around Brant Point and the harbor lanes still keep the gas lamps lit in the evening.

Getting Here

Nantucket Memorial Airport (ACK) is the regional airport on the south side of the island. Cape Air runs year-round flights from Boston (BOS), Hyannis (HYA), Martha's Vineyard (MVY), New York (JFK and EWR in season), Providence (PVD), and White Plains (HPN). JetBlue, Delta, American, and United run seasonal service from various East Coast cities. The Steamship Authority operates the year-round car-and-passenger ferry from Hyannis (about 2 hours 15 minutes; high-speed passenger service in 1 hour) and is the only line that takes vehicles. Hy-Line Cruises runs high-speed passenger ferries from Hyannis year-round and seasonal service from Martha's Vineyard. The Wave is the island's seasonal public-transit system. Bicycles are the great Nantucket mode of transport: the paved paths run from town to 'Sconset (eight miles), to Surfside, to Madaket, to Cisco, and out Polpis Road toward Wauwinet and the moors.

Why People Come Here

Nantucket is, by the long measure, one of the most carefully preserved small towns in the United States — and one of the most culturally and historically dense. The 1659 deed and the two beaver hats. The Wampanoag continuity that long predates them. The 1746 Brant Point Light and the 1746 Old Mill. The 1686 Oldest House. The 1820 Essex and the 1851 Moby-Dick. The 1846 Great Fire and the cobblestone reconstruction. The 1847 Miss Mitchell's Comet and the Pacific Bank roof. The 1850 Sankaty Light. The 1894 Nantucket Historical Association and the 1902 Maria Mitchell Association. The 1966 National Historic Landmark District. The Christmas Stroll, the Daffodil Festival, the Wine Festival, the Film Festival. Visitors come for the depth of the layer cake: the Wampanoag corner of Wauwinet and Polpis and Pocomo, the Quaker meetinghouse and the abolitionist Atheneum, the cobblestone Main Street and the rose-covered cottages of 'Sconset, the surf at Cisco and Nobadeer and Surfside, and the long Atlantic sweep at Sankaty Head. The island is small, walkable, and intact. The wind, the water, the cobblestones, and the names on the hamlets do most of the work; the rest is what the islanders have built and kept since 1659.

Nantucket Logo Apparel Collection