Summer 2012 Preview: Dan’s Favorites—Long Wharf

I have been asked, using my vast experience for the past 52 years with Dan’s Papers, to give you the very favorite things I enjoy out here. Don’t tell anybody about any of them. This is just for you.

What is now Long Wharf in Sag Harbor was founded in 1771 at the end of Main Street in that town. It is the proud centerpiece of the community, and people walk out onto the end of it and back all the time and you can too. More than 100 whaling ships tied up at Long Wharf in the early 1800s. Occasionally they went out whaling. What we now call Long Wharf was originally called Long Landing. Boats were pulled up to a spit of a beach there. Then they built a dock there and it became Long Dock. When they lengthened it, it became Long Pier and eventually, in the early 1800s when 100 whaling ships tied up there it got it’s grandest name Long Wharf, because they had to make it a wharf to get the 100 whaling ships to fit.