Landscape as Witness
Montauk Point / 1898
In 1658, Deep Hollow Ranch was established, giving birth to the American cowboy.
Herds of cattle & sheep, driven from farms to the west, grazed the rolling pastureland.
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Excerpts from BULLY!*
— Chicago Tribune, August 7, 1898 / B3
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Montauk is all turf covered with no sandy soil anywhere. Good grass grows all over it, and there are two large fresh water lakes, one being two miles long by half a mile wide and another smaller lake ….
On the ocean side is a fine, hard, solid sandy beach more than a mile and a half long, where there is always a cool, invigorating breeze, the whole point being practically surrounded by water….The harbor at Fort Pond Bay is well sheltered…. ‘Sternberg Wants Montauk’ / pp 4-5 — Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
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— p.2 / New York Herald, July 27, 1898
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Artists who have visited the Point in search of material have always been enthusiastic as to its natural beauties and its exceptionally fine and cool climate, while a few New York fishermen and sportsmen have been heard to dilate upon its advantages for fishing and shooting.
Until two years ago Montauk Point was reached by carriage or stage from Amagansett, a drive of ten miles along the low beach through deep sand and generally clouds of mosquitoes. A few visitors to the Point sailed or steamed to the little pier in Fort Pond Bay. Two years ago, Austin Corbin, completed an extension of the Long Island Railroad from Amagansett to Fort Pond Bay. This brought Montauk Point into touch with the civilized world but travel thither has not increased to any appreciable extent.
The formation of Montauk Point, which extends seven miles eastward from the end of the railroad at Fort Pond Bay to the lighthouse, is one of sand and clay dunes, covered with turf and heather, the valleys between them filled with freshwater streams and lakes and ponds and swamps covered with bayberry bushes. The bluffs, which are generally of clay, rise abruptly from the ocean on the south and have narrow beaches at their base; but on the northern side the dunes slope gradually to the blue waters of the Sound. The scenery is strikingly like that of the eastern coast of Scotland, and the downs, covered with sheep, make this resemblance all the more striking. In early autumn the heather takes on a purplish hue, the fresh-water lakes and ponds become deep blue in color and the air is wine-like in quality. Thomas Moran, a landscape painter, painted three or four years ago one of his best canvasses on Montauk Point. It gives a good idea of the wonderful colors and the splendid sweep of air and sea and sky which are there to be found….
There is a fair road, which winds in and out among the dunes and across the downs from the railroad station to the Third House — an old farmhouse — a distance of about four miles, but the road from there to the lighthouse is hardly more than a wagon track….
To the east lies Block Island, some ten or twelve miles distant… To the south the open ocean rolls, and to the west the eye follows a line of glistening beach to Southampton. To the north one looks over heather-clad downs to the blue waters of Long Island Sound….
Every breeze that blows is cool and every wind is laden with health and strength from the surrounding waters…. ‘Making Ready Montauk Point’ / pp 25-27 — New York Times.
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What kind of a place is Montauk Point?. … It is surprising how much vastness you can get into a little space. The human eye and the human mind are small and can hold only about so much of bigness anyway, and so long as they are filled the sense of largeness is gained, whether it be with the nightly vision of the universe or a stretch of prairie. Montauk Point is not so thumping big, geographically, yet its wilderness and seeming bleakness appear to have no end to them, and when you are off by yourself looking away from the station, the heave and swing of the land are impressive. If you go out, don’t stay out late. If you do, may Providence be merciful to you. What holes you will be embogged in, what ponds you will have to swim, what ditches you will trip over, what manner of object you will be when you get somewhere next morning, I shudder to think….
But in the sunshine Montauk Point is a different place. It is open and bright and breezy. Moles, rats, field mice and frogs scuttle through the grass; king birds whistle, song sparrows are calling to their mates, locusts are skipping about the herbage in myriads. Though it seems at first glance as if there were nothing but grass, a glance beside the way discovers a profusion of wildflowers. In the little rain ponds, choked as they are with smart weed, there is a clear space, where the water lily blooms and sends abroad its fragrance. The bay plank, lover of sea air and solace of freshly shaven chins, abounds. In spots the great pink flowers of the mallow open and elsewhere you find wild roses, ferns, yarrow, self-heal, pink and yellow thistles, primrose, vervain, queen’s lace, daisy, clover, milkweed, golden rod, the little orchid known as ladies’ tresses, everlasting, sea pink, snap dragon, hawkweed, dandelion, pickerel weed and cranberries—lots of cranberries that will be ripe in a fortnight. You can find a few blueberries and blackberries, also….
Deep as the silence is, if your ear is open you will hear the enormous breathing of the sea, no matter where you are. Nowhere is there a more vehement and splendid surf than that which beats against the southern shore. Go down there and you find visitors, who never saw this sight before, staring by the hour at the tumbling water masses. The beach is smooth and sandy, though it has a deepish pitch, and after a still wind, there is an ugly undertow; but it is safe up to your armpits and you can ride in on the breakers and be rolled around as if you were of no account whatever. A bath in the surf is simply gorgeous. Those who can swim are in the water every day….
What odd wreckage you find just above the tide line! Where does it all come from? Here are timbers, pizzerinctum bottles, clothespins, electric light bulbs, barrels, shark eggs, coal, chairs, caps, mattresses, life preservers, potatoes, grass, nails, dead animals, fragrant fish, whale bones, sturgeon plates, butternuts, beetles, baskets, wash boilers, straw, corks, cartridges, hard tack with “Remember the Maine” stamped on it, pieces of wood riddled by the teredo, cans, trees, crabs, sluice boxes, canvas, rope, cough syrup, nets, a sign “No Trespassing,” potato bugs, scrubbing brushes, shoes, cigar boxes and time tables. This is no fancy. I saw them all.
Another thing about this beach is the singing sand, though that is not so rare as people think. Probably any clear quartz sand will give out a noise under the same circumstances. Walk on the dry beach just above the tide line, yet not where the sand is loose, and drag the heels of your shoes through it. You will hear through the roar of the surf a creaking note, as the myriad particles slide upon each other. Or, if you kneel and brush it briskly with your hand, scraping about half an inch of it over the surface, you will hear it better, a “whee-ool” that is not much like singing, to tell the truth.
The most striking and picturesque thing about Montauk Point is the line of bluffs that rise above the southern beach. Until you have walked along the edge of them you have not seen the peculiar beauty of this place. They pitch so steeply toward the sea that they are vertical in places, and if they were of the usual sand, such as you find in other parts of the island, they would fall away in long, easy slopes; but there is a good deal of clay in them, and they are stained with iron, too, which seems to act as a cement…. ‘Where A Great Army Rests From Its Toil’ / pp 82-85 — Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
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Third House, built in 1806. — New York Herald
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On the night of August 24th, storms from the south and the west passed over Montauk. Lightning, rain, hail and wind — cataracts of rain and hail assaulted the drenched earth. Now and again shafts of lightning met and crossed, as if a stroke was parried by a counterstroke, followed by the colossal gunnery of thunder. Far above, a mighty wind rushed down from the southwest, rising in a series of gusts.
In the sheets of lightning, the ocean was a mass of boiling white, surging up into rearing hills which leaped and fell thunderously upon the hard sand of the beach. The shrieking of the wind was a vocal personification of the demoniac forces of the storm, taking a thousand varied tones, now whistling shrilly, now howling devilishly, now imitating the cry of the storm-beaten wanderer…. Storm in Camp, Three Dead / pp 115-118–The Sun
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In August, the slopes of Montauk Point are rich with the fruitage of the big blackberries in huge patches, so luxuriant of berries that anyone can pick a double handful by simply choosing a spot and plucking around without moving to another spot…. Blackberries / p 127–The Sun
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The ocean beach is by no means a perilous one. Tales of terrific undertow, that mysterious monster, the sea puss, and holes in the sandy bottom are rife, but there is no foundation for these rumors.
There is a strong drag toward the east when the tide is rising, and some holes of a foot or thereabouts, but there is no undertow worth mentioning, and unless you go out too far, you would be in no danger at all, though you could not swim a stroke. The water is delightfully exhilarating…. Ocean Bathing / p 167–The Sun
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On Tuesday, August 30, 2025, linemen, “inside wire” men, practical electrical workers, theoretical electricians, telegraph operators, telephone operators, draughtsmen, photographers, surveyors, civil engineers, flagmen, carpenters and general workers arrived. They brought with them battery wagons, wire wagons, lance wagons, all kinds of wires, complete telegraph and telephone outfits … and they spun out wires as a spider spins his gossamer lines…. If they did not “put a girdle ’round the earth in forty minutes,” they at least followed the methods of the sprite who did…. Laying Out Camp Wikoff /pp 180-184–The Sun
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Cyclists find it rough work to pedal their wheels at Montauk. Expert road riders, who are accustomed to the shortcomings of primitive thoroughfares and who can propel their machines through sandy soil and rutty roadways, get along well enough, but there are certain stretches over which the best of them must walk and trundle their wheels….About a mile from the station the road passes Fort Pond. Up to that point cycling is difficult. Once beyond the pond the wheelman finds easy going…. Cyclists at Camp Wikoff / pp 188-189 — New York Press
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September 3rd — Today seems to be a sort of salt water day in Montauk. A splendid sand beach stretches for half a mile along the shore from the Ditch Plains Life Saving Station….The shore on the Sound does not usually have a surf, and there are many rocks and pebbles underfoot. Consequently, the great majority of bathers go to the ocean beach…. Splendid Sand Beach /p 229–The Sun
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New York papers report devastating heat and record of death, while visitors here appreciate the glorious atmosphere of Long Island’s far end. Today, it is warm here, yet by no means uncomfortable, even in the sun. On the grassy cliffs that border the sea, hundreds of visitors are stretched in luxurious idleness, either asleep with their hats over their faces for shade or drinking in the fresh sea breeze. Below, in the warm sand of the beach, bathers just out of the surf are comfortably napping. Every hilltop as far as one can see is populated with dozing, basking humanity. Nobody seems to be working, nobody seems to be attending to anything but idleness. With the warm, bright sun smiling from the clear light blue of a cloudless September sky, and with the cool salt breeze tempering the warmth, Montauk is a Promised Land for every visitor…. Uncle Sam’s Seaside Park /p 271 — The Sun.
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Montauk is still growing. The road in the vicinity of the station, which at first was merely a beaten way…is now being enclosed on both sides for some distance by new structures, giving it the appearance of a village street, only it lacks well-defined sidewalks. There is a passenger shack; general store where fresh fruit, canned goods, tobacco, shirts, trousers, candies, needles and pins; a shanty restaurant called Hungry Joe’s; post office & express building, and beyond that the officers’ club; and, just around the corner, a printing office, for printing Government forms; and, across the street an electric light and powerhouse with a Tesla polyphase induction motor.
The new buildings have been put up to meet the needs occasioned by the influx of so many thousand visitors. They are a positive necessity, and while none of them are architecturally beautiful, or expensive in construction, they answer every purpose, and furnish a few luxuries which in ordinary life are necessities…. A Village Street / pp 280-281 — New York Tribune.
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For the past twelve years, Capt. James Scott has been the keeper of the Montauk Point Light. He happily welcomes visitors, and shows them all his curios and explains to them the mechanism of the big light, with its speckless glasses–always to be kept just so speckless, though the calls of the inspector be never so few — and tells them sea stories of the terrible coast on which so many good ships have left their ribs to bleach in the sun at low tide. From the lighthouse tower he can point out where the British-Man-of-War Culloden drove ashore in a gale early in the last century, and was pounded to pieces on the northern point, which has since borne the ship’s name; and on the south shore, “Dead Man’s Cove,” where, five years ago, the bodies of twenty-two Shinnecock Indians rolled in the mighty surf for hours after a wreck from which only one man came to land alive; and straight out to the east a line of foaming breakers, marking the Great Eastern Reef, where the biggest ship ever built struck and stuck, looking like a huge building in the midst of the waters; and down almost directly below Money Pond, where Capt. Kidd buried his treasure, and into which the sea never breaks, though the little body of freshwater is within a few rods of high tide, and never will break until the man comes who is fated to find the exhumed stores of wealth.
He shows the visitors weapons which carried death before gunpowder was dreamed of, for the land where he lives was once a battlefield and is forever a burying ground, and the crumbling cliffs, a few yards away, rattles down treasures of Indian arrowheads, axeheads, and other relics, of which Capt. Scott has a large and ever-increasing collection…. Montauk Point Light / pp 286-287 — The Sun
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On the morning of September 16th, a sea fog had taken possession of the point. It is the real article, this fog. Not one of those heavy mists that sweep in from the ocean on the wings of a breeze and are gone in ten minutes, but a thin, drizzly, pearly gray, enveloping cloud that drifts around in visible particles of moisture, too small to be called rain. The life savers had warned of a coming gale, but the gods of weather brought the storm, just near enough to be seen in flashes of lightning on the northern horizon; then shunted it off and sent this fog as a substitute. The storm would have been preferable. Everything is permeated with moisture to a maddening degree. Worst of all, a penetrating heat is pouring down through the fog…. Sea Fog /p 288 — The Sun
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A bugle note carries almost as far as a two-cent stamp. From a mile or two across the hills, the effect is unearthly, particularly if there is a gusty wind blowing and the notes come in snatches….Late every afternoon, a masterly bugler climbs down the cliff to the beach at Ditch Plains, stands facing the open ocean, and perfects himself in the more intricate calls. When the shadows lengthen, he climbs the cliff, and at the summit, raising his bugle once more, sends the golden notes in peal on peal over the darkening ocean, a good-night song to the sun…. A Pure, Far-Reaching Tone / pp 319-320 — The Sun
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This is the beginning of the end of summer. There is no mistaking the tingle in the air. A fresh east wind has blown the atmosphere clear and cold. Every breath that one takes is an exhilaration. Such days a this New York City knows not. In fact, there is a tonic quality to the air here when the wind rises that perhaps could exist only in such a spot as this, where there is full sweep for the wind over thousands of miles of ocean. The sea to-day is of the deepest and the sky of the brightest blue, and the atmosphere is flooded and impregnated with radiance and vivifying electricity. It has made every living thing feel frisky. Visitors running races and skylarking all over the place; the horses are full of life… The ocean, however, has not been extensively patronized. Up to noon there were not fifty bathers in all to be seen on the sand beach, and such as did venture made brief stays. One short, speedy rush, a wild yell, a plunge, another wild yell, and a masterly retreat where towels and raiment were waiting was the usual programme, for water, as well as air, was chilled. Last Sunday everybody was lying around basking. To-day all who are vigorous enough are out on walking tours exploring the point. As far as one can see on the hilltops toward the light there are moving pedestrians. The western shore of Fort Pond, is dotted with figures and, and straggling out across the landscape still further on are occasional groups of specks indicating exploring parties bound for the Hither Wood. Visitors to-day saw Montauk at its best…. A Tonic Quality to the Air / p 337 — The Sun
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An elderly man of decidedly rural aspect, showing evidences of being well-to-do in his spotless black diagonal suit and his heavy watch chain, remarked,
“Purty good lookin’ land around here.”
“Yes, it’s nice country,” another visitor replied.
“Grow much corn around the place?”
“Well, I haven’t grown much,” was the cautious reply.
“No? Looks as if it might be good soil for corn. Nice grazin’ country, I guess.”
“So, I understand,” agreed the other visitor.
“Say,” said the elderly man, putting his hands on his knees and leaning forward with an earnest gaze,
“what price would you put on the land just beyond the lake there to a man that wanted to buy a couple of hundred acres?”
…. Purty Good-Looking Land / pp 347 – 349 — The Sun
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She had been to Montauk before as a summer visitor, so she knew the lay of the land; the long bare reach of undulating sand dunes, the low, wide arch of sky, and the sea on either hand. The color scheme was simple: the dunes gray-green, the shoreline white with sand or brown boulders; the sea and the sky gray or blue and meeting at the horizon. In the distance, tipping off the point, the tall white lighthouse, appearing and disappearing as the roadway rose or fell with the heaving and subsidence of the dunes….Over all, a dazzling and resplendent daylight, and an atmosphere that shimmered with the sun.
She knew what she was going to see….Her first sensation, therefore, on stepping from the train into the crowd of sturdy and contented-looking soldiers was a shock of surprise, so different was the reality from that which had been pictured. Here was life, not death; health, not sickness, an abounding and aggressive activity of man and beast that bordered on brutality. The Montauk she had known, the radiant waste of sand dunes and sky and sea, and the Montauk that she had pictured vanished together; and in their place a varied and picturesque panorama proceeded to unfold itself, full of life and lively movement, and a gayety that was more often than not grotesque. The pain and sorrow were there, indeed, but, on the whole, the all-pervading vigor and humor of the scene was so infectious that even its tragedy was looked on more as a shadow to the highlights of the show than as real pain and death. As for food and drink, it seemed to be everywhere, and everywhere people were eating and drinking with the appetite of health and strength.
Such is Camp Montauk as the mere spectator sees it: a vast and stirring spectacle, made up of the Klondike, the Wild West Show, the rearward of war — and dust. The dust, too, is everywhere. It lies six inches to a foot deep and over in the roads it thickens the air with a golden yellow cloud….
The visitors began to come three weeks ago, and since then thousands, drawn thither by mere curiosity, have seen the great show…. Woman at Camp Wikoff / pp 355 – 356 — Commercial Advertiser.
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“Montauk is not what it was once,” said an old fisherman as he stood on the station platform at Fort Pond Bay on Tuesday last and looked at the dozen or so dingy boarded buildings which have entirely obliterated the picturesqueness of the once beautiful Fort Pond Bay. There is a weird gloominess about the place from which one cannot escape as he walks around and sees the buildings, which a month since were fairly alive with human beings, now boarded up and left as sad reminders of the scenes of pleasure, joy, delight, sadness, sorrow and misery which were alternately presented there during the existence of Camp Wikoff….
The wires of the electric light plant have been taken down and the power house closed up.
Inside the little station, where a few weeks since a half dozen operators kept the telegraph wires hot, the telephone bell kept up a constant ring, and three or four railroad clerks made the visitor think he had struck the Grand Central, now looks like a deserted Spanish block house.,…
Up on the camp ground, from the tops of the hills, one can look off on sea and sound and imagine Montauk to be what it was before its invasion by the army, but when the eye drops, brown and seared hilltops, gullied and muddy valleys, with hundreds of tall poles scattered far and near and standing as solemn sentinels, picture the transition from past to present.
With the exception of the wooden hospital buildings which stand in a group over the hill, about a mile east of the station, all that now remains of the military grandeur of Camp Wikoff is the little enclosed half acre on the summit of Rocky Ridge where like the fever-sticken heroes of the Cuban war…. The Gloom of Montauk / p 448 — E.S.Boughton, Editor, East Hampton Star
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On the whole it may be said that Montauk Point was an ideal place for the isolation of troops who had been exposed to or had yellow fever, and the recuperation of those greatly debilitated by malarial attacks of marked severity. — Report of the War Commission, February 12, 1899 / p 458 — New York Times.
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* Excerpts from BULLY! Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders & Camp Wikoff, Montauk Point, New York — 1898 / A Newspaper Chronicle, Edited by Jeff Heatley. Second Edition published 2023 by Montauk Historical Society, with a Grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation | East End Press.
AAQ / Portfolio: BULLY! …. link.
Available @ Homeport, Montauk; Montauk Point Lighthouse Gift Shop, and on Amazon.
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RELATED PORTFOLIO LINKS
Fort Pond Bay, homeport of Gen. Shafter’s Fifth Army Corps / August & September, 1898.
United States’ first veterans of a war fought overseas on foreign soil.
Camp Wikoff National Military Park / Proposal….link
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Camp Wikoff, 1898: Case History…Rough Rider Wknd, Oyster Bay / June 1st, 2025 …. link
Folder w/ CW Portfolio Links — Map, Portraits, Roosevelt’s Rough Riders …. link
Folder w/ CW Portfolio Links — Theodore Roosevelt & N.Y.S. Politics …. link
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AAQ / Art — Montauk Association, Watercolors by Luquer, 1885 …. link
AAQ / Landmark — Montauk Point Lighthouse, 1796 …. link
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