Oak Bluffs is a town located on the island of Martha's Vineyard in Dukes County, Massachusetts, United States.

It is one of the island's principal points of arrival for summer tourists, and is noted for its "gingerbread cottages" and other well-preserved mid- to late-nineteenth-century buildings.

The Oak Bluffs harbor drew freed slaves, laborers and sailors in the 18th century, and white locals sold them land.

[5] Formerly enslaved people, or their descendants, bought property around Baptist Temple Park in the early 20th century, drawn by the religious services held there.

[6] Down the road from West, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. owned a cottage in the Oval where Arctic explorer Matthew Henson was a guest.

Guests at the inn included the first self-made American millionairess Madame CJ Walker, singers Paul Robeson, Ethel Waters and Lillian Evanti; and composer Harry T.

[7][9] In 1866, Robert Morris Copeland was hired by a group of New England developers to design a planned residential community in Martha's Vineyard.

The site, a large, rolling, treeless pasture overlooking Nantucket Sound, was adjacent to the immensely popular Methodist camp meeting, Wesleyan Grove, a curving network of narrow streets lined with quaint "Carpenter's Gothic" cottages, picket fences, and pocket parks.

Seeking to take advantage of the camp's seasonal popularity (and overflowing population), the developers established Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company, gaining immediate success: Five hundred lots were sold between 1868 and 1871.

Porches, balconies, elaborate door and window frames became common, as did complex wooden scrollwork affixed to the roof edges as decorative trim.

So, too, did the Tabernacle: a circular, open-sided pavilion covered by a metal roof supported by tall wrought iron columns, erected in the late 1880s, which became a venue for services and community events.

[12] Nineteenth-century tourists, arriving by steamer from the mainland, could also choose from a wide range of secular attractions: shops, restaurants, ice cream parlors, dance halls, band concerts, walks along seaside promenades, or swims in the waters of Nantucket Sound.

For a time, a narrow-gauge railway carried curious travelers from the steamship wharf in Oak Bluffs to Edgartown, running along tracks laid on what is now Joseph Sylvia State Beach.

In 1884, the Flying Horses Carousel was brought to Oak Bluffs from Coney Island and installed a few blocks inland from the ocean, where it remains in operation today.

Oak Bluffs is bordered by Nantucket Sound to the north and east, Edgartown to the south, and Vineyard Haven Harbor, Lagoon Pond and Tisbury to the west.

The exposed nature of the pier means that Steamship Authority ferries are routinely diverted to Vineyard Haven during strong northeasterly winds.

Oak Bluffs is also the site of Trade Winds Airport, a private grass landing strip located just north of Sengekontacket Pond.

Many of these town residents were originally from the island of Faial in the Azores, and the neighborhood where many of them lived, located between Vineyard Avenue and Wing Rd, was once nicknamed Fayal.

The town is represented in the Massachusetts Senate as a portion of the Cape and Islands district, which includes all of Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket and most of Barnstable County (with the exception of Bourne, Sandwich, Falmouth and Mashpee).