Ward's Island

Ward's Island opens on a rainy July morning in 1980, when a sheriff arrived with eviction papers and found nearly the whole community waiting for him at the bridge. The guide traces the island's path from a colony of canvas tents rented for ten dollars a season in 1899 to a year-round cottage neighborhood, and the decades-long fight residents waged after the city cleared homes on Centre Island and Hanlan's Point first. Residents formed an association and, by some accounts, trained their children to lie down in front of the lawmen sent to clear them out.