As the iconic film “Jaws” approaches its 50th anniversary in 2025, there’s a surge of renewed focus on Steven Spielberg’s legendary 1975 blockbuster. The film has never truly faded from memory, as its impact and continued influence are evident across a multitude of areas. Known for being the original and one of the finest examples of a summer blockbuster, “Jaws” has left its mark on filmmakers like Jordan Peele and inspired careers in shark conservation, while also elevating the profile of Martha’s Vineyard, an island just south of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

The story of “Jaws” unfolds on the made-up island of Amity, yet it is the authentic characters and residents of Martha’s Vineyard — many of whom took part in the filming — that breathe life into the narrative, giving Amity a sense of reality. This makes it quite straightforward to visit “Amity” today and explore renowned locations from the film, as many charming spots on the island have remained largely unchanged since the movie was shot.

Nearly the entire production of “Jaws” took place in and around Martha’s Vineyard, with only a few exceptions that we will discuss shortly. So, whether you’re planning a visit to the area or are simply intrigued by where exactly the film was shot, here is a guide to all the real-world locations featured in “Jaws” that are accessible to visit.

It’s undeniable: “Jaws” has one of the most iconic — and terrifying — movie openings of all time. With the familiar notes of John Williams’ legendary theme ringing in our ears, we’re transported to a seemingly peaceful beach scene. A group of teenagers are listening to music, drinking, and flirting by the fire as the waves gently lap in the background. It expertly lures us into a false sense of security and creates a sense of calm before the chaos that comes next.

The camera pans over to Tom (Jonathan Filley) and Chrissie (Susan Backlinie), who lock eyes across the beach before they decide to run off together for a late night swim. An inebriated Tom collapses in a drunken heap on the beach while Chrissie dives in for a dip, but something is lurking beneath the surface. Before we know it, Chrissie is dragged to a brutal, bloody death by an unseen monster.

The bonfire scene was filmed on South Beach, near Edgartown (the exact spot is near the beach entrance so you can’t really miss it), but if you want to recreate Chrissie’s gleeful run along the beach, you’ll need to head to Cow Beach, also in Edgartown. Cow Beach was also where they filmed the scenes where Chrissie’s remains are found. This beach is now private and not accessible to the public during the summer, but you can get pretty close to it by visiting the nearby Bend-In-The-Road Beach.

After the chaos of the opening scene and Chrissie’s bloody death, we’re introduced to our protagonist, Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), and his family. We later learn that Brody has a fear of the water, yet the family live in a beautiful waterside property complete with its own dock. This is where Brody’s son Michael (Chris Rebello) is memorably berated for sitting in his new boat after the shark-panic strikes his concerned parents.

If you’re hoping to see the Brody house as it was in 1975, you’ll be disappointed, as the property has been completely remodelled on the same site. You can find it at 265 East Chop Drive in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts. While the house looks very different today, you can still see the pitched roof of the garage where Brody parks his 1975 Chevy Blazer police truck. If you are planning a visit, it’s worth noting that this is someone’s private property, so please be respectful and don’t go snooping.

As well as creating a palpable sense of terror with the expert use of sound and music, “Jaws” is incredibly effective in establishing a sense of place. Amity feels like a real island, and it is in the opening 30 minutes or so of the movie that we get our best lay of the land. We see Brody leave the Amity police station and walk into town past idyllic white picket fences. There is the Amity Gazette, where the slightly dubious Meadows (played by “Jaws” co-writer Carl Gottlieb) plots his attention-grabbing front page headlines. When Brody arrives in town, he visits a local hardware store to pick up supplies for some “beach closed” signs.

All of these scenes were filmed in the centre of Edgartown and are within easy walking distance of each other. The locations used for Amity P.D. and the Amity Gazette are located on South Water Street, and the hardware store is on the corner of South Water Street and Main Street. You can even visit what was the hardware store — it is now a restaurant called The Port Hunter. The Edgartown Town Hall on Main Street stands in for the Amity Town Hall, with interior and exterior scenes shot here. At certain times you can go inside the Town Hall to see the room where they filmed Quint’s (Robert Shaw) iconic introduction. 

The setting for one of the tensest moments between Brody and Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) is a seemingly innocuous ferry journey that takes only a matter of minutes. In this conversation, Vaughn gently persuades the medical examiner to alter the reports on Chrissie’s death to make it sound like a boating accident and he tries to persuade Brody not to cause alarm with any talk of sharks. Brody isn’t easily intimidated by Vaughn, but saving face — particularly when Brody is relatively new in the job — is also important. He wants to keep the local big shots happy and keep beachgoers safe ahead of Amity’s busiest time of year.

The good news for “Jaws” fans is that you can ride this ferry for real. Known locally as the “Chappy Ferry,” you can find it at 53 Dock Street in Edgartown, with the journey taking you from Memorial Wharf in Edgartown to Chappaquiddick Point, a distance of just 527 feet. You can travel as a foot passenger or in a vehicle and it takes a breezy 90 seconds to get from one side to the other. Chances are you’ll be waiting in line for much longer than that, especially if you visit during the height of summer. Two ferries run back and forth all day from 6.30 in the morning until midnight between late-May and mid-October.

With Brody seemingly fighting a losing battle against Mayor Vaughn to shut the beaches, the Chief of Police takes a brief moment to relax with his family by the sea. There, he has several of the local islanders sidling up to him asking about parking permits and other trivial island business, but it isn’t long before something more important grabs his attention. A short distance away from Brody, the young Alex Kintner (Jeffrey Voorhees) begs his mom for 10 more minutes playing in the ocean. She relents, and lives to regret it when the shark strikes again and kills the young Kintner boy.

There are many memorable moments in “Jaws,” and one of them is the famous dolly zoom shot that hones in on Brody’s horror as he watches the attack unfold. In fact, this shot is now so synonymous with this movie that many know it as the “Jaws” shot — even though Alfred Hitchcock did it first in “Vertigo.” Visiting where the famous “Jaws” shot happened is a bucket list moment for movie buffs, and the location in question is Joseph Sylvia State Beach. This beautiful coastal stretch sits between Oak Bluffs and Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard, and is just a stone’s throw away from a certain bridge that is also a must-visit for “Jaws” aficionados.

Brody quickly realises that he is out of his depth and he needs outside help to protect the citizens of Amity. He enlists the help of double-denim wearing shark expert Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss, one of only two main cast members from “Jaws” still alive today) from the Oceanographic Institute, hoping he’ll be able to talk some much needed sense into the mayor and his cohorts. Hooper hops off a boat from the mainland to discover chaos is unfolding on Amity: Local fishermen are heading out to find the bounty for themselves, overloading the boats and armed with dynamite.

Several key scenes were filmed around the Edgartown Harbor area, including Hooper’s memorable arrival, the scene where the tiger shark (“a whaaaaat?”) is hung up on the dock, and the powerful moment where the grieving Mrs. Kintner (Lee Fierro) slaps Brody for his perceived failure to keep her son safe. If you’re travelling by ferry from Falmouth, it is likely you’ll dock at Edgartown Harbor, and if not, it is an area well worth visiting — not just for your “Jaws” needs, but also because there’s plenty of delicious seafood restaurants for you to sample nearby.

Yet another tense confrontation between Brody and Larry Vaughn unfolds following the discovery of Ben Gardner’s (Craig Kingsbury) boat and the shocking revelation that the shark terrorising Amity is not the one currently strung up on the dock. This time, Brody has Hooper to back him up, but if anything, Vaughn seems more determined than ever to keep the beaches open. He dismisses Hooper’s lack of evidence — the scientist having dropped the crucial shark tooth that could’ve helped their case — and criticises the pair for not understanding how things work on the island. This all plays out at a beautiful cliffside location next to the picturesque Gay Head Lighthouse.

Situated on the most westerly point of Martha’s Vineyard, the lighthouse is in the town of Aquinnah. Interestingly, it was moved approximately 130 feet from its original location in 2015 due to cliff erosion putting it in danger of collapse. One small detail you may have missed in “Jaws” is the well-placed “One Way” sign that is visible when Vaughn gets in his car and drives off having made up his mind to ignore the warnings — a great bit of visual storytelling to demonstrate Vaughn’s narrow-mindedness. That sign may or may not be there now, but, following the extensive relocation project, the lighthouse stands as proudly now as it did behind Mayor Vaughn in 1975.

Even after Brody and Hooper’s best efforts to warn the townspeople that the threat of the shark still looms, the beaches are open for the 4th of July holiday weekend. As hordes of tourists flood the island, there is a sense of desperation that no one is taking the possibility of another attack seriously. However, there is evidently some unease among beachgoers, with the crowds preferring to stay on the sand and out of the water — very smart. Mayor Vaughn won’t let this happen on his watch, though, and when he coerces one family to brave the waves, many more follow suit and enter the ocean. When Brody sees his son, Michael, and his friends heading out to sea, the concerned father gently encourages him to take his boat to the pond instead — even if “the pond’s for old ladies,” as Michael says.

This beach scene and the attack in the pond take place in the area just along from Joseph Sylvia State Beach where Alex Kintner was killed by the shark. After a girl spots the shark heading into the seemingly safe pond, Brody runs along the rocks toward the American Legion Memorial Bridge before leaping over the side of it onto the sand to get to where his son is playing, which is actually named Sengekontacket Pond. The bridge seen in the shot has become so associated with the movie that it is even called the “Jaws” bridge on Google Maps. Visiting fans love to jump off the famous bridge into the water below, even though there are signs that warn against it.

Following the attack in the pond, the whole town of Amity is shaken up and Mayor Vaughn finally decides to take action, authorising Brody to hire local fisherman, Quint, to kill the beast. Quint already made quite an impression at the town meeting called to discuss what to do about closing the beaches. Now, Brody and Hooper have to go to him at his waterside shack to negotiate the terms of his employment. If you’re looking for Quint’s shack on Martha’s Vineyard, you could spend a long time searching, as it was a set specifically built for the film.

The good news is that you can still go to the location where they built the set, and much of the surrounding area will still be very recognisable if you’re familiar with the film. The shack was built in Menemsha Harbor, a lovely spot with a fish market nearby. The best thing to do if you want to get the “Jaws” experience is visit a restaurant called The Galley, as the shack was next to that. “If you sit on the deck at The Galley to eat your delicious fish sandwich or lobster roll, there are photos of Quint and Quint’s shack from the film,” says Crispin Haskins, author of “Martha’s Vineyard Mysteries.”

The second half of “Jaws” sees the action moving away from dry land, but we do glimpse it again at the very end. And yes, almost all of the scenes on Quint’s Orca boat were actually filmed on the ocean — something that made for a not-so-pleasant experience for all the cast and crew involved. If you’re curious, most of the ocean scenes were shot off the coast of East Chop between Oak Bluffs and Vineyard Haven, with the destruction of the Orca and the blowing up of Bruce the shark being shot in Katama Bay.

After Quint is dragged to his watery grave and the shark disposed of for good, the reunited Hooper and Brody grab some of the yellow barrels that they’d used to flag the shark and use them as flotation devices to paddle back to shore. As the credits roll, we see a deserted stretch of beach and can just about make out Brody and Hooper safely making it back to dry land. This scene was filmed on Cape Poge on Chappaquiddick Island off the eastern end of Martha’s Vineyard, with Cape Poge Lighthouse also visible in the background.

Most of “Jaws” was filmed on location around Martha’s Vineyard, but there are a couple of exceptions. One is the iconic scene where Brody and Hooper discover the wreckage of Ben Gardner’s boat and Hooper dives in to investigate. If you’ve ever been dubious about the unusually calm waters they find themselves in, then you were right to be suspicious, as these scenes were filmed in a swimming pool belonging to “Jaws” editor Verna Fields in Encino, California. Spielberg simply added some milk to make the water suitably murky. He also made use of the Esther Williams Tanks at MGM Studios in Culver City, California to film the scenes of Hooper inside the shark cage, with stuntman Dick Warlock (best-known for playing Michael Myers in “Halloween II”) replacing Richard Dreyfuss.

Finally — and perhaps the biggest unsung contribution to “Jaws” — we have the real shark footage, shot by husband and wife duo Ron and Valerie Taylor off the coast of South Australia. Not only did the Taylors and their team risk their lives getting some incredible shark footage, but they also played an important part in shark conservation following their work on the movie. “Jaws” blends their footage with the footage of the animatronic shark — something that was famously unreliable and resulted in the decision not to reveal the shark until later in “Jaws” – and it’s the real shark footage that makes the movie that bit more believable.