Photo: Nathan Coe
There is not a single traffic light on Nantucket.
- Every property transfer has a 2% fee of the purchase price that goes to the Land Bank which buys conservation land.
- The average commute to work is 12 minutes.
- Nantucket Maria Mitchell was the first American woman astronomer.
- Nantucket is town, county and an island.
- Nantucket has 82 miles of beaches and is 14 miles wide and 3-5 miles long. The island is about 47.8 square miles.
- From 1881-1917 a railroad ran from Steamboat Wharf to Surfside, Tom Nevers and Sconset.
- Nantucket is 10 degrees warmer than the main land during winter and 10 degrees cooler in the summer due to its proximity to the Gulf Stream.
- There are over 700 shipwrecks surrounding the island.
- The "roof walks" atop many island homes were used to spot incoming whale ships or for pouring a bucket of sand down a burning chimney.
- The Nantucket year-round population is a little over 10,000. At the peak of the summer, there are as many as 56,000 people here with their cars.
- The novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville was based on a true-life event that occurred in 1820 to the Nantucket whale ship Essex and her crew.
- The 1990s televisions shows Wings was set of Nantucket at a fictional Tom Nevers fields airport.
- The Eastern coast of Nantucket was the first place in the US to see the first sunrise of the new millennium.
- There are over 800 buildings on Nantucket which predate the Civil War.