Explosive population growth and all its attendant social issues. A rebounding economy fueled by a robust real estate market. A painful crush of early summer traffic and along with it the sobering realization that the Island has nearly reached its threshold for seasonal population. A mild winter and a nearly cloudless summer capped by a peaceful concert in a West Tisbury field with an unprecedented gathering of more than 10,000 people. These are the benchmarks of the year 1995 on Martha's Vineyard.

It was a year of extremes, of highs and lows, celebration and joy, conflict and tragedy.

It was a year when more than one Island leader peered hard into the future and was unsettled by the view. In the aftermath of two consecutive presidential vacations, the Island became the focus of intense media attention — too much, some said. It was clear that the Vineyard had become the "in" place, but the question hung heavily in the air: Was this really good for the Island? Many expressed trepidation, although there were few clear answers.

"We are in a very sanguine, very happy stage on the Island, but we really are having to confront the problems of overpopulation. We have a little bit of room left but not much — the difficult thing is to figure out a way to stop and I don't know what we can do," a respected Island real estate broker told the Gazette in an interview.

The year began quietly enough and, as it does each year, with a count of the birds. In the traditional annual Christmas bird count, birding enthusiasts fanned out all over the Island and tallied 29,926 individual birds and 120 species.

In the same week the first baby of the year was born and the Island ushered in a new form of county government. In the Boston Land Court attorneys for the town of Edgartown resumed their defense in a challenge to three-acre zoning which was brought by the Herring Creek Farm Trust. There was the promise of a long winter in court and exorbitantly high legal bills for the town.

Legal issues figured prominently in the Vineyard news during 1995. The largest and most expensive legal battle centered around the Herring Creek Farm Trust, which by 1995 had filed lawsuits on so many fronts that it was difficult to track them all.

The Herring Creek Farm Trust, whose principals are farm owners Neil and Monte Wallace, filed plans five years ago to build 54 luxury homes and a private beach club on the oceanfront farm property which lies in the fragile Katama Great Plains section of Edgartown. The plan was rejected by the Martha's Vineyard Commission in February of 1993 and by 1995 the trust had filed a total of seven lawsuits against an array of parties on the Vineyard.

By year's end the trial was over in the zoning case and both sides were waiting for a decision by the chief justice of the Massachusetts Land Court. Also near the close of the year it was revealed that the Wallaces had begun quietly marketing Herring Creek Farm. The asking price was $37 million.

There were other legal issues. The Federated Church in Edgartown became mired in a dispute with the town historic district commission over the use of vinyl siding on a parish house renovation project which was installed in violation of a decision by the commission. The dispute went to court and a superior court judge sided strongly with the historic commission, ordering the church to remove the siding.

Cape and Islands state Sen. Henri Rauschenbach also landed in court, facing criminal charges of corruption. A jury trial was held in the fall with three days of testimony by powerful Beacon Hill insiders, among them Gov. William Weld. Mr. Rauschenbach was acquitted on the same day as O.J. Simpson.

The Wampanoag Tribal Council was a dominant subject in local and regional news during 1995, most of it centering on the tribe's plans to build a gambling casino in New Bedford. The casino holds the prospect of great wealth for the federally recognized Native American tribe whose home base is Gay Head, but it also is accompanied by an array of conflicting moral issues. By the close of the year the $200 million casino was not yet a reality but had cleared several important hurdles, including a formal pact between the tribe and Governor Weld.

The Coast Guard Station in Menemsha grabbed headlines; in the spring it was announced that the station would be closed because of federal budget cuts. Vineyard people responded with an outcry and there followed several months of uncertainty. In the fall the news was reversed and it was announced that the station would remain open, although with staff cuts.

The 1995 town meeting season came and went in each of the six Island towns, with voters keeping a wary eye on municipal budgets and local tax rates. The people of West Tisbury sent a strong message about their tax rate, voting to reject 11 of 12 proposition 2 1/2 override questions on the town ballot.

Fiscal issues also dominated discussion among leaders at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital, as they struggled to maintain the hospital's mission in the community against a bleak financial outlook. Early in the year the hospital appealed to the Vineyard towns for $500,000 to help keep the hospital afloat. Residents and political leaders responded with the message that first the hospital must be more accountable and open about its records and policies.

The hospital's heaviest liability was Windemere Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, which was saddled with losses nearing $2 million in the past two years. But Windemere also serves as the central long-term care facility for the people of the Vineyard and hospital leaders vowed to keep it open, despite the problems.

In the middle of the summer the results of the Vineyard Health Care Survey were released. The survey revealed a muddy methodology but issued a clear message calling for a new, integrated health care system on the Island. By year's end the hospital had announced dramatic changes to open up its relationship with the Vineyard community, and took the first steps as a leader in developing the new system.

Everywhere there were signs of rapid growth. A report released by the United States Census Bureau showed that in the last four years the Vineyard and Nantucket grew faster than any other community in Massachusetts.

Growth was evident in the schools, which saw sharp increases in enrollment. The strain on the resources showed in other ways. The six towns continued to struggle toward a solution for regional trash disposal, and each town also confronted separate sewage issues.

In Edgartown construction began on a new $18 million sewage treatment plant upgrade, but there was conflict with a group of neighbors to the plant, and also with the Herring Creek Farm Trust, which filed a lawsuit against the town claiming that the outmoded plant threatened to pollute the entire Vineyard aquifer.

In Oak Bluffs a crisis erupted near the end of the summer when town septage lagoons failed and were closed by state environmental officials. Circuit avenue restaurant owners reacted with alarm when expensive water use restrictions appeared imminent.

There were other crises. Early in the summer an unprecedented crush of visitors descended on the Vineyard for the Fourth of July weekend; the result was a nightmarish scene of gridlock in Woods Hole and Falmouth when thousands of travelers clogged the Woods Hole Road in their cars. Vineyard residents, Steamship Authority leaders and Falmouth residents reacted with alarm and there was urgent discussion about putting limits on automobile traffic to the Island.

The discussion continued for months and by year's end the boat line had voted to eliminate guaranteed standby to the Vineyard during key peak summer weekends as a trial for the coming summer. SSA governors also took steps to tighten policies for advance summer reservations to the Vineyard when it was revealed that abuses had taken place among certain real estate agents and home renters.

It was a banner year for conservation on the Vineyard. The Martha's Vineyard Land Bank bought 19.1 acres of land in 1995 at a cost of $1.3 million, bringing its total public holdings on the Island to just over 1,000 acres.

The state Department of Environmental Management announced its purchase of 800 acres of land from the descendants of George Flynn for $4 million in an unprecedented conservation pact with the state and The Nature Conservancy.

State Secretary of Environmental Affairs secretary Trudy Coxe traveled to the Vineyard to announce a $500,000 self-help grant for the town of Gay Head, the largest such grant awarded to any Massachusetts community this year. The money will go toward the conservation of Moshup Trail.

Midway through the summer Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary announced a financial crisis which threatened the sanctuary's education programs in Vineyard schools. Two days later two anonymous donors wrote checks to bail out the venerable Island wildlife sanctuary.

Conservation leaders also were involved in shaping new missions for their organizations and land trusts, moving away from historically passive roles and taking a more aggressive posture as available land on the Vineyard rapidly slipped away. "We are all very much aware that things are closing in, and there is a finite amount of land on the Island and there is a lot of pressure and a lot of habitat," said land planner Robert Woodruff.

New faces in 1995 included Steamship Authority general manager Armand Tiberio, county manager Walter M. Johnson and Vineyard schools superintendent Kriner Cash.

The parade of famous faces continued with little pause. Paramount Studios decided to do a week of location shooting on the Vineyard for the movie Sabrina and in the spring Harrison Ford, Julia Ormond and director Sydney Pollack took up residence on the Island for several days. President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton came to the Vineyard over Columbus Day weekend to attend the Chilmark wedding of Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen. The Clintons were received on the Vineyard with characteristic grace and hospitality — and to the relief of many, the visit was low-key and attracted modest media attention.

New buildings went up everywhere. An $18 million renovation and addition was completed at the regional high school, a new Oak Bluffs School was built and the West Tisbury School got a new addition. The Steamship Authority built a new terminal in Vineyard Haven and construction began on a new Hebrew Center. The Agricultural Society got a new home, which was really an old barn, dismantled in New Hampshire and moved to the Vineyard with the help of hundreds of volunteers in an old-fashioned barn-raising and rebuilding project.

There were wins. Paul Sampieri, a Vineyard Haven hair stylist, won the state lottery, sharing a $2 million jackpot on a quick-pick ticket be bought at Cronig's Market in Vineyard Haven. Regional high school senior Tyler Vunk shattered the high school basketball scoring record. The Vineyard charter school won state approval.

There were losses. Harvey Ewing, longtime Island journalist and retired bureau chief for the New Bedford Standard Times and Cape Cod Times, died at the age of 72, of complications from a stroke; two months later his son Douglas Ewing died at the age 41 after a battle with cancer. Alfred Eisenstaedt, the famous Life magazine photographer who had summered in Chilmark since the 1940s, died on the Vineyard at the age of 86. And James B. Reston, longtime New York Times columnist and former Vineyard Gazette publisher who was widely regarded as the finest journalist of his era, died of cancer in early December at the age of 86. His death stirred an outpouring of tributes, many of which were published in the Vineyard Gazette.

There was tragedy. Louis Toscano, a gifted mathematics teacher at the Martha's Vineyard Regional High School who had touched the lives of hundreds of students and families, drowned in a tragic accident at the Tisbury Great Pond late in July, and all across the Island there was a profound sense of loss.

A little more than a month later the Vineyard was shocked by another accident: A Lift van which was carrying five people who were disabled to their jobs at Chilmark Chocolates crashed on the North Road. Timothy Cantwell, age 25 and a well-known member of the community, died six weeks later from injuries he sustained in the crash.

There was celebration. The annual agricultural fair was held at the new barn with a fitting theme: Dawn of a New Era. The Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting Association held its 126th Grand Illumination and for one night the gingerbread cottages of Oak Bluffs were aglow with lights and fellowship. And the summer closed with what was billed as the hottest concert of the year — singer-songwriters James Taylor and Carly Simon reunited for the first time in 15 years for a benefit concert for the Agricultural Society. Tickets for the concert sold out in four hours and more than 10,000 people attended the event. Despite the enormous crowd, the concert was without incident and attracted a diverse crowd which included more than a few aging baby-boomers.

There were endings. Menemsha fishmonger Everett Poole hung up his apron after 50 years and turned his business over to his son. Oak Bluffs fire chief Nelson Amaral retired. In October Cong. Gerry E. Studds announced that he would not seek re-election; the 12-term representative traveled specially to the Vineyard — which he called the heart of his district — to make his announcement to the nation from the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown.

There were anniversaries: The Martha's Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby celebrated its 50th, the Vineyard Conservation Society had its 30th, the Martha's Vineyard Boys' and Girls' Club had its 60th and the Field Gallery in West Tisbury celebrated 25 years.

There was sunshine. An unusually mild winter was followed by an early spring and beautiful summer weather prevailed from June through August. By summer's end the Vineyard was suffering from drought, the worst in 14 years. The state forest was closed to the public because of fear of fire. The dry spell continued through the early fall, and local horticulturalists speculated that many trees and shrubs would die next year from the stress of drought. Finally, in November, the rains came, drenching the Island for weeks, and by Christmastime when a blanket of wet snow fell, many said the drought was over.

And then 1996 loomed and the Vineyard was full of hope for the new year, hope for many things — for a continued sense of community, for good leadership, for thoughtful solutions to the problems which come with growth, for a continued emphasis on conservation and regard for the environment.

And hope — just maybe — for another year when crocuses bloom in January and the pinkletinks sing in early March.