One hour via fast ferry, or 20 minutes via air.
The Island of Martha's Vineyard covers roughly 100 square miles, and is home to both year-round and seasonal residents. Some live "up-island" in the more rural towns of Aquinnah, Chilmark and West Tisbury, and others live "down-island" in the more populous towns of Edgartown, Oak Bluffs and Vineyard Haven (also known as Tisbury). Each Island town is unique in its geography, personality, and character.
Edgartown was the Island's first colonial settlement and it has been the county seat since 1642. The stately white Greek Revival houses built by the whaling captains have been carefully maintained. They make the town a museum-piece community, a seaport village preserved from the early 19th century. Main Street is a picture book setting with its harbor and waterfront. The tall square-rigged ships that sailed all the world's oceans have passed from the Edgartown scene, but the heritage of those vessels and their captains has continued. For the past hundred years, Edgartown has been one of the world's great yachting centers.
Oak Bluffs is the home of the Flying Horses Carousel, the oldest continuously operating carousel in the country. Its horses were hand-carved in New York City in 1876. This historic landmark is maintained by the Martha's Vineyard Preservation Trust. It is open daily during the summer and on weekends in the spring and fall.
The brilliant colors of the mile-long expanse of the Aquinnah Cliffs astonished early explorers and have continued to be a source of intense interest to scientists and visitors alike. Here, layers of sands, gravel, and clay of various hues tell a hundred-million-year-old story of a land first covered with forests, then flooded and laid bare, then covered with new growth, time and again.
