Sag Harbor Walking Tour
Long Wharf has historically been the heart of Sag Harbor. In the hey-day of whaling the wharf was at the center of commerce in the village, with outfitters and stores selling provisions built up around it. The wharf itself was in fact about twice the length it is today. Here is a good place to begin a tour of the village. Standing at the end of the wharf and looking toward the far woodland off to your right you can see the location of the early settlement at Northwest. This was the first harbor in the area. But settlers from there began moving much of the commerce to Sag Harbor in the mid 1700s. Early wharves were started around the harbor in 1742 and 1753, with the first "sturdy" wharf with try works — for boiling down whale blubber into oil — built near where you are standing in 1761. In its day loads of cord wood and produce from neighboring farm communities would be shipped out and, later, steam boats and paddlewheelers plied routes between here and New York City and New London, Connecticut bringing visitors to the village as it developed into a resort destination. The big steamboats are gone but the wharf is still busy all season long with pleasure boats and cruisers that continue to bring visitors. The visitors are far more subdued now than when whaling was the village's major industry, we presume. A description of the village and its inhabitants, including transients from all over the world, and their antics once disembarked from years at sea chasing whales, so frightened Quee-Queg in Herman Melville's Moby Dick that the Indian refused to leave the ship. Melville, of course, walked these streets you are about to walk, as did James Fenimore Cooper (who invested in a whaling ship while in residence) and John Steinbeck lived and wrote in his home on Bluff Point. Today you could likely see authors Thomas Harris, E.L. Doctorow or Lanford Wilson walking along, all who call Sag Harbor home. Walking up Main Street you can see how the village grew up from the water and how it was shaped by a series of tumultuous fires that threatened to destroy the town. The first big one, in 1817, destroyed most of the buildings along the wharf and several warehouses filled with whale oil along the waterfront. In all, twenty houses and stores were destroyed. Out of that fire, though, came the impetus to create the Sag Harbor Volunteer Fire Department, established two years later, the first volunteer fire department in the State of New York. (Its museum is on the corner of Church and Sage streets). The second great fire — arguably the worst in the village's history — claimed nearly 100 buildings, eliminating 57 businesses and dozens of homes. One can imagine 50 buildings at a time blazing in the heavily settled downtown area. Both sides of the road halfway up Main Street from the wharf were destroyed as was much of the east side of Division Street and shops along the waterfront. The third great fire in 1877 again destroyed several buildings on the east side of Main Street and another fire in 1881 destroyed a block of stores along the west side.
