Edgartown / Martha's Vineyard

Edgartown's white clapboard houses were built by whaling captains, and the island's other town, Oak Bluffs, holds three hundred gingerbread cottages that grew out of a Methodist camp meeting where families upgraded from tents. Martha's Vineyard has been a summer island since the 1860s, reachable only by ferry or small plane, and Oak Bluffs has one of the oldest African American resort communities in the country.