The latest influx of cash will help chip away at the Chilmark project’s current $5 million budget shortfall, and could prompt a special town meeting later this year on the housing proposal.
The barracks at Peaked Hill are deserted. The Army radar station, installed and opened under circumstances of great secrecy in the early days of the war, is closed and locked, its war service completed. At one time a considerable contingent of troops was stationed at the hill, the exact number to be disclosed sometime when the history of the war has been written.
Work began on Tuesday on the road from the Middle Road to the top of Peaked Hill, the contract having been awarded to R. W. Balam, Boston contractor, who is engaged in putting through several jobs on the Island. The road is to be surfaced, after the grading is completed, and will supply a government way to the observation post that is planned for the Island’s highest point.
The section of Peaked Hill which the government proposes to take for the purpose of establishing a signal station represents only a small part of the Peaked Hill property so-called. The entire property comprises 150 acres, and the part chosen by the government is a four and a half acre plot, which includes the site of the triangulation point monument previously erected there. It is not, as a matter of fact, the highest point of the Vineyard’s loftiest eminence, 311 feet in height, but it is regarded as line of the most beautiful. It is the peak nearest the Middle Road.
Garrett Hagen, of the United States Department of Justice, has completed a search at the registry of deeds in Edgartown looking toward the acquisition of Peaked Hill by the federal government for the purposes of a signal station. The hill at present is owned principally by John Wesley Whiting. Preliminary surveys were made some time ago.
Mr. Hagen was assisted by a secretary and representatives of the federal engineers, and was accompanied also by a car and a chauffeur.
The contours of Peaked Hill, as viewed from the Middle Road, have changed almost beyond belief, due largely to the construction of the road which winds around its steep sides and has been carved deeply into them. The hill is topped by one of the skeleton towers so largely used for signaling purposes, and is now manned by a detachment of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The handful of men assigned here, presumably in connection with the tests now going on to prove or disprove the effectiveness of coastal defenses against invasion, is quartered in tents on the hill.
Apropos the observation station at Peaked Hill, where a drive to the summit is now under construction, and likewise the report of a similar station to be constructed at Gay Head, near the lighthouse, it now becomes known that the reason for two such stations so close together is that the boundary lines dividing the Boston and Newport coastal defense areas converge on the Vineyard in such a way as to leave part of the Island in each district.
