Nantucket

Nantucket (ˌnænˈtʌkᵻt) is an island about south from Cape Cod. Together with the small islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget, it constitutes the Town and County of Nantucket, a combined county/town government in Massachusetts, a U.S. state. The name "Nantucket" is adapted from similar Algonquian names for the island, but is very similar to the endonym of the native Nehantucket tribe that occupied the region at the time of European settlement. Nantucket is a tourist destination and summer colony. Due to tourists and seasonal residents, the population of the island increases to around 80,000 during the summer months. The average sale price for a single-family home was $2.3 million in the first quarter of 2018. The National Park Service cites Nantucket, designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1966, as being the "finest surviving architectural and environmental example of a late 18th- and early 19th-century New England seaport town." Nantucket is accessible by boat, ferry, or airplane. Nantucket probably takes its name from a Wampanoag word, transliterated variously as natocke, nantaticu, nantican, nautica or natockete, which is part of Wampanoag lore about the creation of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The meaning of the term is uncertain, although according to the Encyclopædia Britannica it may have meant "far away island" or "sandy, sterile soil tempting no one". Wampanoag is an Eastern Algonquian language of southern New England. The Nehantucket (known to Europeans as the Niantic) were an Algonquin-speaking people of the area. Nantucket's nickname, "The Little Grey Lady of the Sea", refers to the island as it appears from the ocean when it is fog-bound. The earliest European settlement in the region was established on the neighboring island of Martha's Vineyard by the English-born merchant Thomas Mayhew. In 1641, Thomas secured Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, the Elizabeth Islands, and other islands in the region as a proprietary colony from Sir Ferdinando Gorges and the Earl of Sterling.