A tourists’ guide published in Boston on June 1, 1897 unabashedly praised our favorite town. “It is probable that the great majority of people who make reference by voice or pen to Martha’s Vineyard are thinking when they do so, only of Cottage City, that place being the grand centre of attractions and interests for the whole Island, and, indeed, the summering centre, par excellence, of all the land and water thereabouts.”

Edgartown’s whaling Capt. Nathaniel M. Jernegan invested in a scheme to develop Katama and in the ill-fated Martha's Vineyard Railroad Company, but that was a small part of his interesting life.

With Oak Bluffs designed as a glorified summer resort, the builders achieved their dream never realizing we would become a year-round community.

“Proud to be from OB” is a modest claim compared with past articles. In one Vineyard Gazette article a writer opined, “People have said that there would not be any Vineyard summer resort without Oak Bluffs. Whether or not there is general agreement on this, history has thus far shown that is largely true.”