The Tashmoo Beach

The Tashmoo Cottage and Hideaway is about 1-1/2 miles on a dirt road through the forest, from the Tashmoo Beach. It is a perfect morning walk in the quiet of the wood, or a great bike ride for active kids. The road is named Herring Creek, for the Herring run at the bottom of the Tashmoo Lake, where Tisbury Water Works is located, and where the natural well providing our drinking water, is located.

On the way to the beach, you will travel past a pathway to Wilfred Pond. It offers a cedar path to a bench under tree canopies from which you may view rare bird life. The Marthaís Vineyard Landbank path, leads you on to a section of Landbank owned beach, with a view of the Vineyard Sound, and the mainlandís departing harbor, Woods hole, in the blue distance.

The Vineyard Sound

Continue back on the dirt road, to The Tashmoo Public Beach, is a secluded, not so well known, Martha's Vineyard beach.

Originally, Tashmoo was a lake. In the 1800s, a big storm tore an opening through the bordering sandbank and opened the lake up to the ocean. The opening proved profitable for shellfish and fish, plus it created another great port for recreational and commercial fishing boats.

Tashmoo Beach

These days, the Vineyard Haven (or Tisbury) town, vigilantly keeps the channel deep from the Town Dock at the end of Lake Street, all the way to the ocean side of the public beach, where Herring Creek Road ends.

Experienced fishermen love to come to this opening for striper fishing. It is a great event with fish and bird-life, when the tide comes in, and the ocean waters press through the narrow opening with great force, forcing the small fish grown in the protected lagoon, to the surface. You will see diving birds and jumping stripers in plenty, when the conditions are good.

Over the dunes to the Tashmoo Beach

There is a lifeguard posted on the ocean side in the summer, and a marked area for ocean swimming. There are great shellfish sand bars and lagoon life for the wading explorer, on the inside of the beach. The horseshoe crab breed their young in the bend off the inner part of the public beach. If you come down to the beach in the early summer, when the moon and tide is just right, you will see the mating ritual of these pre-historic creatures unfold. Throughout the summer, the growing crabs shed their shells, and they float in to be found at the water line.