From the Vineyard Gazette editions of July, 1968:

The Vineyard sizzled yesterday as it seldom does. The maximum temperature recorded at Edgartown was 91, and of course the high where heat gathered in streets and other places was way above 91. This is really hot for the Island. Last summer 85 was the maximum. The all-time high for the Island is said to have been 96, reached on July 20, 1892. At that time there was a Weather Bureau station on the Island.

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The ambiguous term “hippie” was very much on the lips of Vineyarders this past weekend, and in district court yesterday a large number of young people, who by virtue of their style of dress and coiffure invite the hippie label, face a number of complaints brought against them by Island police.

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We, “The Vineyarders for McCarthy,” ask you to join us in a massive effort to nominate and then elect Senator Eugene McCarthy. We believe we will win, because the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the dream of Senator Robert F. Kennedy is the same dream that lives in Eugene McCarthy. Only Senator McCarthy survives to sound the call for re-direction of national policy and a realistic new and moral approach to the questions of Vietnam and human rights. (From a full page ad for Vineyarders for McCarthy)

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Workmen employed in Oak Grove cemetery in Vineyard Haven, when they reported for duty on Tuesday morning, found four youths asleep in hammocks slung between the trees. The unsolicited tenants departed without argument when they were ordered to leave, but they left their hammocks behind, a possible indication that they did not regard the orders too seriously.

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Duarte Village, at the bend of the Beach Road in Vineyard Haven, has been sold by Manuel S. Duarte to Island Properties Inc. the land extends chiefly along the Lagoon shore front from the Hinckley Lumber Company to the Shetland Shop, comprising an estimated four acres on which are 12 or 14 buildings.

The area was once the town’s dumping ground.

A huge Air Force transport plane caught fire while on passage and radioed from a position 30 miles south of Noman’s Land that she was obliged to crash-land on the water. The plane was fully manned, and indicated that it would remain in the air as long as possible, meanwhile holding to a course toward the land.

Two of her engines were on fire making it difficult to maintain altitude. She made for Squibnocket, and with the land under her lee she ran parallel to Long Beach, and offshore of it, draining her fuel tanks as she flew. Somewhere off Long Beach the pilot decided he could keep her in flight to make Otis Field, saving the plane and its crew, but giving observers some nerve-wrecking moments.

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It is expected that Lieut. Col. Fred B. Morgan will be named administrator of the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital at a meeting of the trustees this afternoon. Colonel Morgan, now at Scott Air Force Base and due for retirement, will assume his new duties on Sept. 2. Colonel Morgan is a native of Edgartown, and a graduate of the Edgartown High School.

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Hyannis interests have opposed the use of that port by the Steamship Authority because it would compete with exisiting excursion lines running in summer to Nantucket. But the Hyannis to Nantucket route is the short and obvious one.

Nantucket was far more interested in bringing the railroad to Hyannis than Hyannis was. In 1850 Nantucket ran an excursion steamer loaded with 150 islanders to show that the distance — port to port — was a mere 27 miles as compared with the voyage of 50 miles from Nantucket to New Bedford. From Woods Hole to Nantucket is about 37 miles.

It was prinicipally Nantucket influence that brought the railroad to Hyannis in 1854, and from that year until 1872 there was a regular steamer service between Hyannis and Nantucket. The sidewheeler Island Home was a favorite of the day. She could be glimpsed far out in the Sound as she steamed majestically toward Hyannis harbor.

In 1872 the railroad was extended to Woods Hole and that port was used in order to draw the traffic of the Vineyard. But the advantages of the Hyannis route for Nantucket not only remain but have become much greater in an era of pressure and high costs.

Compiled by Alison Mead