A Hamptons Summer

Can there be a more quintessentially American beach destination than the Hamptons? Though the area has a long history-whaling, farming, an artists' colony-the proximity to New York City means constant evolution. Today it has some of the best places in the country to eat, shop, and play. Presenting T+L's manual to the ultimate warm-weather playground.

Novelist and longtime Hamptons resident Jay McInerney explains the eternal appeal of the South Fork.

Long Island resembles a fish with a long, split tail that has collided with the southern tip of Manhattan. It is the remnant of two separate, intersecting glacial moraines, laid down over the continental shelf many millennia ago as the glaciers melted. South of the rocky central spine of the island, the fine white sand of the glacial outwash spills into the Atlantic, creating beaches that, over the past century and a half, have drawn wealthy New Yorkers eastward in droves. This summer migration takes them out along the lower fork of the tail to find paradise in a series of villages, settled by farmers and fishermen, that are collectively known as the Hamptons.