Aquinnah (Gay Head)

No official town Web site


Many year-round residents of Aquinnah are descendants of the Wampanoag, the only federally recognized Native American tribe in Massachusetts. This recognition has resulted in a government-to-government relationship between the United States and the Wampanoag Tribal Council.

The Wampanoag have a long history and showed the colonial settlers how to kill whales and plant corn and where to find clay for the early brickyards. Much later, these Aquinnah Indians were in great demand as boatsteerers in the whaling fleets. It was the boatsteerer who cast the iron into the whale. The Aquinnah Wampanoag were judged to be the most skillful and courageous boatsteerers of that era.

Their courage also made them take to the seas in incredible weather to aid the survivors of some of the famous wrecks that took place off the Aquinnah Cliffs. As further testament to their valor, a plaque on the schoolhouse commemorates the fact that Aquinnah sent more men in proportion to its size to World War I than did any other town in New England.

The brilliant colors of the mile-long Aquinnah Cliffs astonished the early explorers and have continued to be a source of intense interest to scientists and visitors alike. The layers of sands, gravel, and compact clays of various hues tell a hundred-million-year-old story of a land first covered with forests, then flooded and laid bare time and again. The action of the seas, the glaciers, and the land itself have contorted these once-level layers into waving bands of color that stream above the sea.

Time does not leave these cliffs changeless. Erosion continues as it has for centuries, turning the seas red and revealing fossil secrets. From these we know of the great sharks that swam over what is now Chilmark, of the clams and crabs — so like our own — that inhabited ancient seas. Pieces of lignite from the Cretaceous period are found on the beach, looking like nothing more than the remnants of recent campfires. Fossil bones of camels and wild horses, as well as those of ancient whales, have been found in the cliffs.

Because of the extremely dangerous rocky ledge offshore, this has always been a place of great peril to the mariner. One of the first revolving lighthouses in the country was erected atop the cliffs in 1799. It had wooden works, and when they became swollen in damp or cold weather, the lighthouse keeper and his wife would be obliged to stand all night and turn the light by hand to send out its white flash. The current red-brick, electrified Aquinnah Light stands in its place.

The preceding narrative was provided by the Mass Department of Housing and Community Development.




Aquinnah has no official town Web site, but more information, including geography, demographic, and housing statistics, visit the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development site for Aquinnah: http://www.state.ma.us/dhcd/iprofile/104.pdf