"Plans social activities." "Want traffic lights." "Holds dance." "Trustees start dredging 'Leeds.'" "More sidewalks."

Those are front-page headlines from the Center Moriches Record between 1926 and 1929, and all of them are about the same organization. They appear in the Center Moriches Free Public Library's index to the Record, filed under "Chamber of Commerce of the Moriches." That chamber turns 100 this year. Its history shows that a lot of what feels like public life in East Moriches and its neighbors has never been run by a government office. A volunteer business group has been doing it since 1926, and it has always paid for its civic work and its social calendar in the same room.

The first four years, as the Record reported them

The chamber says it was organized in 1926 and incorporated in 1946. Its mission statement commits it to the commercial, recreational and civic interests of the Moriches area. The newspaper index shows how literally the founders took the word "civic." The library indexed the Record from September 1926 through December 1934, using bound volumes the Moriches Bay Historical Society made available for microfilming. Here is a sample of the chamber's front-page entries from those early years, in the index's own wording:

Social events and civic requests alternate through the whole list. A dinner dance sits next to a dump site, a ladies' night next to a petition for street lighting. In May 1928 the chamber petitioned "for more lights." In September 1928 it was warning people about dumping. In April 1929 it was cooperating in a cleanup, and a month later it held a steak supper. The same members who argued about railroad grade crossings in early 1930 were planning that summer's "big social" a few months later.

The chamber's own centennial column, published in The Suffolk County News on October 5, describes the early years the same way. In its words, members "discussed everything from roads, street lighting and traffic signals to community facilities, dredging and beautification."

Why a business group was doing public works

The library's introduction to the index gives a clue about how busy the area's commercial core was. A cartoon in the Record on January 1, 1927, complained about how hard it was to find a parking space on a Saturday. If shoppers are circling for a space, shop owners have a direct stake in traffic signals, sidewalks and lighting. Those projects are what bring customers in, so a merchants' group that pushed for them was pushing for its own business.

That explains why the civic requests and the social events kept running side by side. The dances and dinners kept members coming to the meetings where the petitions were drafted. The index even records a membership drive in May 1927, the same month the chamber was weighing site offers for a community house.

Not every hamlet in the area stayed under one banner. The same index lists a separate Chamber of Commerce of East Moriches, reported as forming on March 24, 1932, active by that June, and holding an annual meeting that August. Eastport organized its own chamber in 1928. For several years in that era, the stretch along Moriches Bay had more than one chamber, each focused on its own Main Street.

The same job, a century later

Today the Chamber of Commerce of the Moriches speaks for the whole Moriches area, and its committee list shows that much of its work is still civic.

• Holiday lights. A chamber committee handles the holiday lights in both Center Moriches and East Moriches. Members check the lights, contact the electrical company to install them and decide what goes where.
• The Veterans Parade. It is held each year on the second Sunday of November and steps off at 2 p.m. from East Moriches School on Adelaide Avenue. It ends at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Park with a ceremony honoring that year's Grand Marshal. The 2026 parade was set for Sunday, November 8, rain or shine.
• Main Street flower baskets. The Downtown Beautification Organization, which is affiliated with the chamber, pays for the baskets, maintenance of the "Welcome to Center Moriches" sign area and anti-litter work. The chamber says the baskets alone cost more than $5,000 a year and receive no government grants.
• The St. Patrick's Day Parade. It runs the Sunday before March 17, and the committee starts fundraising for the next year's parade right away.
• The Spring Fair. It falls on the second weekend of June alongside the Center Moriches Fire Department's Strawberry Festival, usually with 100 to 120 vendors along Main Street from the Center Moriches Square to Railroad Avenue.

Set the $5,000 basket budget next to the 1929 headline "More sidewalks" and you are looking at the same arrangement. Local businesses pay for part of the streetscape and organize the volunteers to keep it up, with no tax line behind it. The scale is smaller than dredging a waterway, but the model the 1920s Record documented is unchanged. The chamber's board, led by president Jackie Osborne with vice president Lisa Goulding, treasurer Geraldine Sapanaro and recording secretary Amy Mahnken, is still a volunteer group of local business people.

December runs on the chamber's calendar

The centennial events come in the weeks after Thanksgiving, when the chamber's holiday work is busiest. In order:

1. December 4: the commemorative magazine. The chamber is mailing a 1926–2026 Centennial Commemorative Magazine that it says will reach every home and business in the Moriches area.
2. December 8: the 100th Anniversary Party. It is a Great Gatsby-themed evening that doubles as the chamber's annual holiday dinner, from 6 to 9 p.m. at Rock Hill Country Club, 105 Clancy Road. Tickets are $75 per person and include a buffet dinner, open bar and live music by The New Millennium Jazz Band. The chamber asks guests to come in Roaring Twenties cocktail attire. Tickets and RSVPs are handled through the event page.
3. The Friday before the parade: the tree lighting. The chamber's holiday committee is set up to hold a tree lighting at Neville Street Park on the Friday evening before the holiday light parade. If that pattern holds, this year's lighting falls on December 11.
4. December 12: the Holiday Parade of Lights. The Center Moriches Fire Department lists it for Saturday, 6 to 8 p.m., on Main Street from Montauk Highway and Lake Avenue to Ocean Avenue. The rain date is Sunday, December 13, at 5 p.m.

The anniversary party at a country club has a precedent in the index. In July 1927 the Record reported "Golf & country club favored," and a month later it reported the chamber's first dinner dance. A century later, the chamber is marking its 100th year with a 1920s-themed dinner and dance in December. In between, the same organization has been checking the bulbs that go up over the road in East Moriches.

For more about the hamlet beyond the chamber's calendar, see our East Moriches neighborhood guide and our look at how new restaurants in East Moriches arrive by water.

The groups that keep a place running are a big part of what you buy into when you live in the Moriches, and they don't show up on a listing sheet. If you'd like to talk about East Moriches, Center Moriches or anywhere along the bay, Kelly Dijorio is glad to share what she knows about how these communities work. Let's Connect.