It was 175 years ago next month that six devout Edgartown Methodists decided to establish a summer religious community of their very own and selected the largest oak grove in New England, near Eastville, to be its site. Camp meetings that provided prayer, preaching, hymn-singing and repentance had come into vogue in America at the turn of the 19th century. In 1827, one had been established at West Chop in the community of Holmes Hole — today’s Vineyard Haven.

The Tabernacle cupola is undergoing the most significant restoration in more than a century. The $635,000 project will not only preserve the cupola for the years ahead, but restore its key purposes of ventilation and visual distinction.

For Russell E. Dagnall, president of the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association, the work, called Topping off the Tabernacle, is but part of a much larger $3 million restoration of the Tabernacle that began almost 10 years ago.

More than 2,000 people gathered in the Tabernacle Saturday night to celebrate the structure's 125th birthday.

Grandparents, grandchildren, and everyone in between filled the rows, sitting on some of the same benches used in the 1800s, when the religious campers gathered under the oak trees and the canvas tent that predated the Tabernacle's construction in 1879.

"It had begun to look its age - and so have I," said the evening's host, newsman and Vineyard Haven summer resident Mike Wallace, complimenting achievements of the Tabernacle's current restoration project.