The last weekend of July is one of the busiest summer “turnover” weekends. As vacationers – coming and going – wait in ferry lines, unnoticed and unsung armies of cleaning crews scramble to clean up before and after them.

Shelley Christiansen

In Edgartown, a hotel for dogs and their human companions.

Margaret Knight

Rhonda and Erik Albert and their children Iris and Miles live in an old sixteen-room house in Oak Bluffs. Last year they had nearly a thousand summer guests, and this year they’d like to have more.

Margaret Knight

Here I am at...Wesley House?

Mary Breslauer

Thomas Craven was the leading art historian of his day, and his Vineyard friend Thomas Hart Benton was his favorite artist.

Elizabeth Hawes

Ranking the world’s top water views is an apples-and-oranges challenge of unfathomable proportions. Yet surely the Vineyard, with 125 miles of tidal shoreline and a host of great and less great inland ponds, has its contenders: the epic vistas from Chilmark hilltops, the broad sweep of ocean from the upper decks of upside-down homes in Katama, the still coves and busy town harborfronts. The list goes on and on. Without question, the Island has picturesque farms and meadows, forests and townscapes, but are they the cover models of Vineyard resort propaganda? Not so much.

Shelley Christiansen

The people at the Home & Garden Television network like to say they didn’t choose Martha’s Vineyard as the location of their nineteenth Dream Home giveaway; it chose them. About a year ago, when the HGTV team was scouting potential sites, the Vineyard was an easy sell. “This is an ideal location. It’s beautiful here,” said Jack Thomasson, the official house planner for the HGTV Dream Home. “People are really friendly on Martha’s Vineyard. The Island has a lot to offer.”

Sydney Bender

Most of the year I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and when it comes up in conversation that I own a house on Martha’s Vineyard, people always get that look. “Oh, I see,” the look says, “you’re one of those rich East Coasters with a vacation home on that exclusive little island.”

Elizabeth Nordlinger

Pages