the beauty of the island’s landscape has offered solace and inspiration. Around the same time, queer and artsy folk from the city were first discovering holiday rentals in the small, rustic community of Cherry Grove, catalysing a process that would come to create what anthropologist Esther Newton calls "America's first gay and lesbian town". After a 1938 hurricane destroyed many of the houses in Cherry Grove, Newton observes in her history of the community, gay men and lesbians bought up much of the lots, then going cheap, from the Long Island families who previously owned them.
