Gray Gables

Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th President of the United States of America (the only President to be re-elected in non-consecutive elections), was the Governor of New York before that, and the Mayor of Buffalo before that.  Grover Cleveland was a Bourbon Democrat, which today would be aligned with a Libertarian or conservative Democrat.  He’s considered one of the more successful Presidents we’ve had.

Cleveland was born and died in New Jersey.  During his years as President he had a summer home in Bourne, Massachusetts in an area known forever since as Gray Gables.  That was the name of his summer home, which became the Summer White House during his Presidency.  The house burned down in the 1970’s, but the history of Gray Gables lives on in the area.  A train station that was built for the President’s train stop still exists today, but was moved away from the tracks to an area near the Aptucxet Trading Post and Museum.  This train station had a direct telegraph connection to Washington, DC.  Gray Gables was the epicenter of politics in the summers of 1893 through 1896.

Cleveland Ledge is named after the former President and it was in these choppy waters in Buzzards Bay that the President would go fishing.  Road names like Presidents Road and Cleveland Circle betray the history of the place.  The land around Gray Gables has been built up over the years since then.  Hog Island stopped being an island when they used fill from the channel leading up to the canal to create a peninsula.  But Buzzards Bay remains largely as Cleveland would have remembered it.