At a preliminary meeting of those interested in the proposed railroad, held at Samuel Osborn’s office, in Edgartown, on Tuesday evening last, the necessary officers were chosen to effect an organiz
For 21 years — from the late summers of 1874 through 1895 — a passenger train chuffed along a route that looks inconceivably imposing to us today: from what’s now the Oak Bluffs Steamship Authority wharf, over the very sands of State Beach, through the fairways and greens of the Edgartown Golf Club, perpendicularly across Upper Main street, along the border of not one but two cemeteries and into what are now the subdivisions and farmlands of Katama before terminating at two dead ends: the dunes of South Beach and a hotel at Mattakessett whose ugliness was rivaled only by its windswept isolation and self-evident vulnerability to fire.
These were the last survivors of the Vineyard’s most ambitious project. Of course the right of way is an intangible thing at best to any but the owners. And it was sold. As for the streak of rust. Well, a spirit of economy which never characterized the scheme in its heyday finally removed the rails of the first and last railroad on the island.
Mr. J. R. Kendrick, General Manager of the Old Colony Railroad, and other officials of that road, visited the Island last Monday, and he is now general manager of the Vineyard road, having taken possession of the property in behalf of the trustees, Messrs. Chas. F. Choate and Frederick L. Ames.
