Cars crammed onto the Steamship Authority freight deck carry license plates from Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and all corners of America. Amid the parade of passengers arriving on the Island Tuesday, one couple walked off the ferry holding a clam rake and a pool noodle in their hands.
Traffic at the Triangle in Edgartown and Five Corners in Vineyard Haven is always bad, but as we lean into the holiday, it feels impossibly gridlocked. There’s seemingly nowhere to park in Oak Bluffs, and visitors walk shoulder to shoulder under red-white-and-blue bunting on Edgartown’s narrow brick sidewalks. There are long lines everywhere for everything.
The Fourth of July is upon us, a seasonal ritual of crowds and chaos and fireworks and festivities with friends and family. The crowds have flocked here to take a load off; lounge on beach chairs at South Beach and Joseph Sylvia State Beach; stroll beside picturesque storefronts and multimillion-dollar houses; and to participate in the patriotic festivities, especially the big parade, this year dedicated to D-Day veterans, with a special nod to the parade’s former organizer.
Behind the scenes, Island officials have been preparing for the onslaught for months. Restaurants and bars are adding shifts for staff, and stocking up for increased patronage, especially in Edgartown, where a majority of the holiday celebrations take place every year. Hotels are also largely booked for the weekend. Rentals are at a premium.
Last year, there were 115,000 visitors to the Island in the first week of July, and the numbers are expected to be similar this year, Carolina Cooney, executive director of the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce, told the Times.
Travel records are predicted to be broken across the country this year; forecast numbers exceed prepandemic travels. Almost 71 million across the country are expected to travel for the Independence Day holiday travel period from Saturday, June 29, to Sunday, July 7, AAA Travel predicts. “We anticipate this July Fourth week will be the busiest ever, with an additional 5.7 million people traveling compared with 2019,” Paula Twidale, senior vice president of AAA Travel, said in a press release.
They’re not all headed here, of course, but there’s no doubt the Island’s population has increased ahead of Thursday, and is projected to surge past 100,000 people. There are 90 scheduled Cape Air flights to Martha’s Vineyard Airport for the holiday — between Thursday, June 27, and Thursday, July 4 — and more than 450 booked passengers, which is up 6 percent from last year, Rebecca Chace, director of marketing for Cape Air, told The Times.
Geoff Freeman, MVY airport director, said flights are on par with previous years, but with the holiday on a weekday, they’ve seen people arrive as early as last weekend to celebrate on the Island.
August is a steady month for the airport, but this is the biggest holiday week for the Island, Freeman said. It’s probably the largest concentrated period of people traveling here, commercially or privately, he said. It’s also regularly the first week that Steamship Authority car reservations sell out in January, Sean Driscoll, communications director for the SSA, said.
In order to keep up with the summer crowds that travel to the Island, Matt Davies, manager of the Wharf Pub in Edgartown, ordered 60 cases of Corona last week, and another 60 cases for this week. “Odds are we’ll go through all of it,” he said.
The Wharf Pub also booked entertainment for the whole week, instead of just the usual weekend gigs. And the entertainment — DJs, live music, and karaoke — has been booked for months, Davies added.
They didn’t hire more bar or server staff for the holiday week, but everyone’s slated to work more shifts. Davies said they hired two extra security guards in anticipation of larger late night crowds.
“It’s a madhouse after the fireworks,” Davies said. Their seasoned staff knows what’s to come this weekend: “It’s the way the waves come during the Fourth of July.”
Stop & Shop hired 80 seasonal employees to handle the increase in store traffic in the summer, Stephanie Cunha, external communications manager for the store, said.
The Harbor View Hotel is 100 percent sold out for the Fourth, and its Independence Day Dinner at Bettini, where patrons will have special access to the veranda for the parade and fireworks as well as performances by Vineyard Sound, is mostly sold out. There are only a few seats left at the bar, Jean Wong, director of marketing for the hotel, said.
They’re normally very busy this time of year, but Wong wasn’t sure she’d ever seen 100 percent capacity before. Most of the 117 keys are also spoken for for the rest of the week.
Fire and medical personnel and law enforcement have been preparing for months for the Fourth of July weekend.
In Oak Bluffs, Fire Chief Nelson Wirtz puts extra EMTs on duty as soon as high season starts, which he said was last weekend.
“This brings our staffing to four EMS providers, from 8 am Fridays until 6 pm Sundays,” Wirtz said. Otherwise, emergency medical calls are responded to by three EMS providers.
There’s no increase in duty officers this weekend, and Wirtz’s staff, who are all volunteers, already “operates at critically low levels,” he said.
Nevertheless, July 4 is historically busy for fire personnel. There are a lot of alcohol-related incidents, and amateur-firework-related incidents. It’s illegal in Massachusetts for private citizens to use fireworks, but Wirtz and his team end up “running around putting out small brush fires,” he said.
The fire department defers to law enforcement to fine the users and confiscate the explosives.
The whole week is busy in Oak Bluffs, where there tends to be a later-evening atmosphere in town, so Chief Jonathan Searle, while loaning some officers to Edgartown for the parade and fireworks, also augments extra officers in overtime for peak hours as bars fill up and then shut down.
“I’m hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst,” he said.
Edgartown really is the center of the vortex for the patriotic celebrations.
Joseph Sollitto — organizer of the parade for the past decade — estimates that 1,500 people march in the parade, and about 25,000 people watch from various points around Edgartown.
In honor of the 80th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944, the parade is dedicated to all D-Day veterans this year. There’s a special nod to Fred B. (“Ted”) Morgan Jr., a veteran who fought during the storming of Normandy. Morgan was also a former organizer of the parade, and a Edgartown select board member for 30 years.
When the Old Whaling Church’s bell rings five times in a row on Thursday, July 4, Edgartown’s Independence Day Parade will step off from the Edgartown School and start its march.
“We step off, even if everyone isn’t ready,” Sollitto said. Starting promptly at 5 pm was the only thing that Sollitto promised his predecessor.
At the front of the parade, Morgan’s uniform will sit in a golf cart, where he once led the march himself.
“He was the town in a lot of ways,” Sollitto said. “He was very important to the community and very important to the country.”
The weather forecast so far looks like good beach weather, but the four-day weekend could also pose challenges for health workers, as heat-related incidents are high on the list of concerns.
Bruce McNamee, Edgartown chief of police, has every one of his officers on duty, but said the holiday is an all-hands-on effort for Island law enforcement.
“No individual agency can handle it on its own,” he said. He’s taking anyone he can get his hands on — officers from other towns, State Police, and the Sheriff’s Department.
Between arranging medical and fire personnel in various places across town, including the Harbor View Hotel, Edgartown Yacht Club, Chappaquiddick, and the Triangle parking lot near Ocean Heights, to responding to an increased call volume on the holiday, Alexander Schaeffer, Edgartown fire chief, has his hands full.
“One year, we had 11 calls during the parade. It was a merry-go-round of ambulances,” Schaeffer said.
Directing ambulances through closed roads and large crowds of people is hard enough, but Schaeffer is also in charge of the fireworks.
The fireworks will be set off from one of the barges owned by Ralph Packer, longtime mariner and owner of R.M. Packer Co. It’s a service he donates to the town, and the display is set to begin over Edgartown Harbor at 9 pm.
This year’s fireworks vendor is Pyrotecnico FX, Inc., and was deliberately changed from last year’s pick, Central Maine Pyrotechnic Co., after they made some “poor choices,” Schaeffer said.
About 25 unexploded shells were found by the fire department and the State Police bomb squad on Chappaquiddick Beach on July 5 last year.
“It’s a good event, but it takes a lot of work. It’s a high lift for the town,” he said.
