Middle Line Road is not much of a road. But it’s a heck of a legal problem, as quickly became evident when the controversy over its 270-year history and uncertainty over its future use landed in the Dukes County superior court in Edgartown this week.
The essence of the case is simple enough.
The Hall family, which owns land alongside the road, wants to improve it. To that end, they engaged contractors to cut trees and widen it.
The latest round in a dispute pitting a landowner’s right of access against conservation values played out like a game of cat and mouse in town hall, the courts and the woods of Edgartown last week.
It began a little before 10 a.m. on Friday morning, when Paul Elliott, the president of the Edgartown Meadows Road Association, found workmen cutting down trees along Middle Line Road.
The Martha’s Vineyard Commission last Thursday heard emotional testimony from an Edgartown property owner opposed to new guidelines for the protection and maintenance of five ancient pathways in Edgartown, each of which dates back to colonial times.
Benjamin Hall Jr., an Island attorney whose family owns land off Ben Tom’s Road, one of the ways that would fall under the proposed guidelines, said they had been hastily drafted and would deny his family the right to develop their property.
Vigorous environmental protection, in the form of a revised bylaw, was approved for five ancient ways by a throng of voters in Edgartown’s Old Whaling Church last night.
The popular vote was not swayed by the impassioned and sustained pleas of several members of the Hall family, whose 74 acres of property is crossed by several of the paths. Voters approved the bylaw by a margin of 199 to 47.
A group of neighbors is appealing a recent superior court decision that Rogers Path in West Tisbury — an ancient way once used by Wampanoags and as a cart path by English colonials — must remain open for public use.
In a decision that helps cement the ongoing efforts of Island towns and conservation groups to protect the ancient ways that crisscross the Vineyard like so many strands of history, a superior court judge ruled yesterday that Rogers Path in West Tisbury is open for public use.
“The public has the right to use the entire length and width of the way,” wrote the Hon. C. Brian McDonald, an associate justice of the superior court.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court has solidly backed the town of West Tisbury in its ongoing effort to keep Rogers Path, an ancient way that leads to a Civil War-era cemetery in the North Tisbury section of town, open for public use.
A longstanding effort by the town of Edgartown to protect five ancient byways suffered a setback last week when a superior court judge sent a district of critical planning concern (DCPC) designation back to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission for another review.
The five paths are Middle Line Road, Ben Tom’s Road, Pennywise Path, Watcha Path and Tar Kiln Road. Their use as cart paths and byways dates to Colonial times, and in 2007 the commission approved a town-sponsored initiative to designate them as special ways under the Island Road District DCPC.
