Embedded Files
Gone but (maybe) not forgotten: Slater Drugs, the New York Ocean Science Laboratory, the Dolphin restaurant, Bill’s Greenhouse, First National Bank, a Texaco station, and $50 fines in East Hampton Town.
Community Spirit at “The End”: Montauk in the 1970s
Community Spirit at “The End”: Montauk in the 1970s
In Montauk the 1970s represented a time of both growth and constriction, in some ways reflecting national trends but in others uniquely place-based in its economic, human, and physical culture. The year-round population – including workers at the Air Force base and the New York State Ocean Science Laboratory, which were active at this time – was about 3,000, rising to about 18,000 in summer, according to a 1970 article in the New York Times. Those numbers were only about 600 and 2,000, respectively, shortly after World War II, before private homes and motels started to proliferate across the landscape.
Throughout the 1970s, a growing number of people sensed that unrestricted growth could imperil local resources both on land and in the sea, and restrictions on the use of both began to emerge. The commercial fishing industry was thriving, albeit competing with foreign fleets in U.S. waters until the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act was instituted in 1976. A proposed residential development at Indian Field sparked the formation of the now 56-year-old Concerned Citizens of Montauk, even as elected officials embarked on their own efforts to purchase and in other ways protect land from development. Many leaders in the growing local environmental movement were women, reflecting a broader trend in politics that also was beginning to trend locally toward Democrats.
The East Hampton Star's first issue of 1970 and the first issue of 1980. Courtesy of New York Historic Newspapers.
Erosion control efforts were underway at the Montauk Lighthouse, while community members endeavored to establish a public library and a medical center in Montauk. Small-scale and sometimes quirky community events included Donkey Baseball and Columbus Day parades while community fundraisers – in which celebrities like Betty Friedan, Edward Albee, and Dick Cavett rubbed elbows with local volunteers – were staged before the days of expensive tickets and VIP seating.
This exhibit shares materials from the Montauk Library Archives to recreate a sense of the community spirit at this time, and a taste of its flavor, both for those who lived through it and would like to revisit it and for those who missed it and are curious to explore it.
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