Fodor's Pocket Nantucket

Introducing Nantucket For the first time since its golden age as a world-renowned whaling capital in the early 1800s, the tiny island of Nantucket is decidedly on a roll. Modest shingled cottages that might have gone begging for a buyer a decade ago now fetch an easy million. The 800-plus pre-1840 structures that compose the core of town -- a National Landmark Historic District -- only rarely change hands, and then at exalted prices. As for the trophy houses -- mega-mansions built in the hinterlands for rich arrivistes -- they're constantly off the charts, setting new records only to break them. And yet its ascending chic has very little to do with what attracts most people to Nantucket in the first place, or keeps them coming back. The allure has more to do with how, at the height of summer, a cooling fog will drift in across the multihued moors or the way rambling wild roses, the gaudy pink Rosa rugosa, perfume a hidden path to the beach. Essentially Nantucket isallbeach. Off Cape Cod, some 26 mi. out to sea, the island measures 3.5 by 14 mi. at its widest points, while encompassing -- such are the miracles of inlet and bay -- more than 100 mi. of sandy shoreline, all of it open, as a matter of local pride, to absolutely everyone.Fodor's Travel Publications, Inc. Staff is the author of 'Fodor's Pocket Nantucket' with ISBN 9780679007821 and ISBN 0679007822.