Martha's Vineyard of Rhode Island and Massachusetts takes about four and a half hours (270 minutes). In the era before modern highways and jet planes, travelers took New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad trains from New York City or Boston to Woods Hole or Hyannis, at which point they would embark on ferries to the island. Commuter airline Cape Air offers frequent service to the island via the Martha's Vineyard Airport (MVY). It provides year-round service to and from Boston, Hyannis, New Bedford, Providence, and Nantucket, and seasonal service to White Plains, New York. Additional air service is provided to New
Martha's Vineyard is still a substantial Wampanoag population on the Vineyard, mainly located in the town of Aquinnah. Aquinnah means "land under the hill" in the Wampanoag language. The island was the last refuge of the Heath Hen, a once common game bird. Despite 19th Century efforts to protect the hen, by 1927, the population of birds had dropped to 13. The last known Heath Hen perished on Martha's Vineyard in 1932. The linguist William Labov wrote his MA essay on changes in the Martha's Vineyard dialect of English. The 1963 study is widely recognized as a seminal work in the foundation