Onset in Wareham: from an 1877 grove in the oaks to a summer bay lit with red flares

WAREHAM In 1915, 35 cents and about an hour and 25 minutes on an "Onset" trolley car carried a rider from New Bedford, past Fort Phoenix and the cranberry bogs, to the wharf at Onset.

The 1915 edition of the guidebook Trolley Trips Through New England listed that fare and that time in its timetable, and its writer made the ride sound like a holiday all its own. "On to Onset!" the chapter began, and off the car went over the long low bridge "with a good view of the plucky little Fort Phoenix," through Fairhaven, Mattapoisett and Marion, past the "bogs of the famous Cape Cod Cranberries" and into woods "noted as the haunt of the trailing arbutus." At Onset waited the wharf, the Hotel Onset at $2.50 a day and what the guide called "one of the beauty spots of the old Bay State." "The harbor is always alive with pleasure craft," it said. "Of late seasons it has become distinctly the vogue to while away a week here at least."

Onset was not yet 40 years old that summer. The village in Wareham began in 1877 as a grove by the bay where Spiritualists held their summer camp meetings, and in the decades that followed it grew into a summer place of cottages and hotels, bathing beaches, band music and boats on the water. Some of what drew people there in those years still brings them down to the bay on a summer night.

A grove of oaks above the bay

The 1884 History of Plymouth County, compiled under D. Hamilton Hurd, tells how it started in a long account of the Onset Bay Grove Association set off in quotation marks. A few gentlemen, it said, went looking for a place on the shore where camp meetings "under the general auspices of Spiritualism" could be held every year, and which might also be made "a permanent summer resort for any who desired to build cottages or to tent beside the sea during the warm season." They searched the coves and headlands of Cape Cod from Sandwich to the ocean before they found what they wanted on Onset Bay, "a thickly-wooded grove of oaks, covering about one hundred and fifty acres," growing to the edge of high bluffs and "surrounded on three sides by water," in the part of Wareham then known as Agawam.

The first meeting toward forming the association was held in Boston on Nov. 9, 1876, the history says. The Legislature granted a charter on March 31, 1877, the association organized under it on April 11 with $2,500 in capital stock, and the grounds were surveyed into building lots, groves, streets and avenues.

On Thursday, June 14, 1877, about 1,000 people gathered as the grove was dedicated "to the principles of Spiritualism and the interests of human progress," the history records, with addresses by the association's president, H. S. Williams, and by Emma Hardinge Britten and Cephas B. Lynn, and music by the South Easton Band. The first camp meeting ran from July 8 to July 24 that summer. The Library of Congress holds a 1905 postcard photograph of a bay view captioned "First cottage built in Onset, May 15, 1877."

Warm water and clam bakes

Bathing in the bay was safe and pleasant, the association's account said, "as the bottom is hard and clear, gradually descending from the shore, and the water many degrees warmer than upon the direct ocean beach." Clams were plentiful for "the famous 'clam bakes' and 'chowders,'" which it counted "among the luxuries of life at the sea-side." On race days "the white wings of the trim little vessels are seen flashing about among the islands," and fishing parties ran out into the bay after bluefish that weighed "usually from three to twelve pounds."

Getting there was simple, since the Old Colony Railroad built a new Onset depot for the association's use about three-quarters of a mile from the grove, 50 miles and two hours by the regular trains from Boston, the account said, and parties could also come by steamboat and step off at the association's own wharf. The cottages followed quickly, with more than 50 going up in 1883 and more than 100 in 1884, the history reported, and the grounds already held $30,000 in taxable property.

The village on the 1885 map

A year later the whole village was drawn as a bird would see it, in a view published by O. W. Walker and printed by Geo. H. Walker & Co. of Boston that the Library of Congress and the Boston Public Library both keep. Cottages crowd the streets between the bluffs and the water, sailboats and a little steamer work the bay, and the index in the corner walks a visitor through the grounds. There is an auditorium and a temple, a skating rink with Chas. Talbot as manager, the Hotel Onset, the Glen Cove House and the Washburn House, a Bay View Cafe, coffee and lunch rooms, a bakery, a Japanese store and a fruit stand where James Collins also sold confectionery and cigars. There are photograph rooms, a school, a mediums' home and public boats, and the letter X marks the "First cottage erected at Onset," with the name Mrs. S. S. Applin beside it.

Out in the bay sits Wickett's Island, marked on the map as the Wicket Island Home of Dr. Abbie E. Cutter. The 1884 history says the five-acre island "derived its name from an Indian who formerly owned it, and out of respect to his rights they suffered him to retain it."

A rotogravure in the New Bedford Free Public Library's collection, from a photograph the library's catalog dates to around the 1880s, shows an "Old Time" picnic at Onset held by the Howard Methodist Episcopal Sunday school, with Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Brownell in the upper right.

The Wigwam on Crescent Place

The Spiritualists also left Onset the Wigwam, a building Wareham Week said in 2014 has "no equal in the entire world." A small group of them built it in 1894 with significant financial backing from Mary Weston, the first president of the Wigwam Spiritualists, whose presidential chair was still inside when the paper wrote about the building. In the Spiritualists' own account as the paper told it, the building was to be painted red with a green roof and raised 26 feet high. CAI, the Cape and Islands NPR station, reported in 2017 that the building's "distinctive wigwam shape pays homage to Native Americans, whose way of life heavily influenced the early spiritualists."

The Wigwam fell into disrepair late in the 20th century, and the restoration that Gerry Pearle and others raised money for was finished on July 30, 1994, 100 years to the day after it was built, Wareham Week reported. Twenty years later the building at 9 Crescent Place was still holding religious services. "We have an obligation to keep it going," Pearle said at the Wigwam in 2014. CAI reported in 2017 that the Wigwam and the First Spiritualist Church of Onset were still offering regular services, classes and workshops.

Trolley days

By the summer of that 1915 guide, the cars reached Onset from two directions. The New Bedford line ran on through Onset to Buzzards Bay, Bourne and Monument Beach, and at Wareham, the guide said, "comes in the line from Middleboro, connecting there for Taunton, Brockton and Boston." The ride from Middleboro to Onset cost 25 cents. Of the view at the end of it, the writer said, "The shore, studded with dark pines, or the bay dotted with isles of emerald green, are alike charming to the eye."

Postcard summers

A generation later, the Onset that people mailed home came in bright linen colors. Tichnor Bros. of Boston printed dozens of Onset postcards that the Boston Public Library dates to about 1930 to 1945, now in its Tichnor Brothers Collection, with titles like "Good old summertime at Onset Bay," "Happy summer time at bathing beach," "Park and band stand," "Town pier" and "Wickets Island and beach." Some were published for Grant's Gift Shop in Onset, including the bathing beach card with this story, where swimmers sun themselves on towels below a grassy bank, a diving tower stands on a float off the beach and a wooded island sits across the water behind the boats.

Another card in the same collection advertised Mario's Restaurant in Onset with "The Best Italian and American Food on the Cape. Prices Very Reasonable," and gave its telephone number as 972-W. Onset's waterfront stayed in the camera's eye into the 1960s, when E. Milton Silvia photographed the tour boat Vacationer at Onset on June 12, 1964, and the Onset Bath House at 186 Onset Ave. on March 14, 1965, according to the catalog records for his pictures held by Spinner Publications.

Red flares at summer's end

The crowds still come down to the water when the season closes. On Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025, the Onset Bay Association's annual Illumination Night drew hundreds of people to Onset Beach and Bayview Park to watch more than 1,500 red road flares light up the beach, with the Southcoast Brass Band playing while the crowd waited, Wareham Week reported. "Oh it was beautiful," Denise Bresse of Middleboro told the paper. "They go down all the way to Shell Point and come all the way up. It's really pretty." Her husband, Dave, said the night also honors the old coastal rescue crews. "There used to be rescue crews on longboats with oars and this is honoring the people that did that because it was very dangerous," he said.

Wayne Augustine, a Middleboro native who told the paper he spends a lot of time in Onset, was there for his first Illumination Night. "We love Onset, it's always been a beautiful town with great people," he said. "It's a beautiful night, it's the end of the summer so there's no better way to spend it."

Nearly 150 years after a few searchers chose a grove of oaks on a bluff above Onset Bay as a place to tent beside the sea, people still come down to the bay as summer ends. They gather on the same shore where the trolley riders came to the wharf and the bathers on those linen postcards spread their towels in the sun, and they watch the red lights run along the beach to Shell Point and back, one more summer at Onset gently drawing to a close.

Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.