Where Was Jaws Filmed? Every Major Location Explained

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"Jaws" turns 50 in 2025, and it's just as good as when it first swam into movie theaters. Now, the movie isn't exactly a great vacation advertisement. Anecdotes about "Jaws" making people afraid of sharks or even swimming in the ocean are endless. But it's also an undeniably beautiful movie; when there's not a shark attack happening, it can make you long for summer and beaches.

"Jaws" wasn't Steven Spielberg's first ever movie, but it was the widest stage he performed on by that point. Not even 30-years-old and still sui generis, Spielberg delivered a masterpiece out of a shoot so hectic it inspired a Broadway play (aka "The Shark Is Broken")! A big part of the difficulties on the "Jaws" production (which went 100+ days over schedule) was mechanical problems with the shark animatronic. Did the choice of shooting location have anything to do with the issues?

If you're as brave as Captain Quint (Robert Shaw) himself when it comes to facing sharks, then can you really visit Amity Island if you want?

Now, Amity Island is not a real island... or, at least, the island is not really called that.

"Jaws" was primarily shot on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Settled by Europeans in the 1600s, the Vineyard was once a poor fishing village. Nowadays, though, it's a wealthy enclave and a happening vacation spot (with a permanent population of about 20,530), similar to other Massachusetts islands like Cape Cod and Nantucket. The Vineyard also advertises its connection to "Jaws" to attract fans of the movie as visitors.

In the 1970s, though, the Vineyard fit the bill for a small island town like Amity. In "Jaws," Amity is said to be on the East Coast United States (the Brodys moved there from New York City), so shooting on Martha's Vineyard added even more verisimilitude. It had the small town (houses and thoroughfare), the beaches, harbor, and docks that Amity would need. The "Jaws" production even recruited some local MV actors such as Lee Fierro, who played the mother of the ill-fated Alex Kintner (Jeffrey Voorhees).

Spielberg famously chose to shoot "Jaws" on the actual ocean rather than a water tank at a studio. He's said the Atlantic Ocean surrounding the Vineyard was just as important to his choice of location as the town on the island. Interviewed by author Laurent Bouzereau for the book "Spielberg: The First Ten Years," Spielberg explained:

"[Martha's Vineyard] was the only place on the East Coast where I could go 12 miles out to sea and avoid any sighting of land but still have a sandy ocean bottom only thirty feet below the surface, where we could install our shark sled. That's the depth the mechanical shark apparatus required. Another factor was that once we were at sea on the Orca, no matter what direction my cameras turned, you didn't see land. My fear was the minute the audience saw land, they would not feel the danger. I wanted the audience to think the boat couldn't just simply turn around and go back to shore. I literally needed a 360-degree stage at sea."

In "Jaws," Amity Island appears to be both the name of the physical island and the town that sits on it (as in town, singular). There's only one Mayor, Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), and Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) is the only chief of police. It makes sense; the story, which is about a deadly force intruding on a small town, is a lot simpler if it's only a single town.

But Martha's Vineyard is home to a few different communities. One of them is Edgartown, which was founded in 1642 and historically served as a whaling port. Much of the town of Amity in "Jaws" is really Edgartown. For example, the town square that Brody walks through early on is really the Edgartown downtown; that walk concludes with a mini ferry ride, which is Edgartown's still-in-operation Chappy Ferry.

Amity Town Hall, where Quint first introduces himself with nails on a chalkboard, is likewise Edgartown Town Hall. Meanwhile, the harbor where we first meet Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) is really Edgartown Harbor.

The "Jaws" shoot didn't stay only in Edgartown, though. The Brodys' house was filmed at the still-standing address of 265 East Chop Drive in the town of Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts. Similarly, the scene where Brody and Hooper are trying to convince Mayor Vaughn to shut down the beaches, walking and speaking and circles, was shot at the Gay Head Cliffs. These are a landmark located in the small town of Aquinnah on Martha's Vineyard. The Gay Head Lighthouse can also be seen in the movie during this scene. 

Quint's home, a small fisherman's shop (seen in the last portion of "Jaws" set on land) was a set built for the film, but it was built in the Martha's Vineyard fishing village of Menemsha. As the shop was reportedly too tall under local zoning requirements (it is a two-floor building as depicted in the movie), it was demolished immediately after filming wrapped.

"Jaws" begins in the water from the POV of the shark itself. But after that, it cuts to the beach, where Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie) is enjoying her last moments alive at a late night beach party. This was filmed across two beaches: the land scenes were shot at Edgartown South Beach. The terrifying swimming scene, though, where Chrissie is dragged underwater by the shark, was filmed at Cow Beach.

The first time we actually see the shark in "Jaws" is when it claims its fourth victim, an unnamed man (Ted Grossman) sailing a red rowboat in the pond off the main beach.

Universal Pictures

Brody's son Michael (Chris Rebello) is also swimming in the pond, but thankfully the shark swims past him. The "pond" on Amity island is actually part of Sengekontacket Pond, which spans 700+ acres. If you visit Martha's Vineyard, you can pin down the movie location by the American Legion Memorial Bridge, which connects Edgartown to Oaks Bluff and is visible in the background of the aforementioned scene. Don't be so quick to jump off of the bridge, though, and not just because there could be a shark waiting below.

During the climax of Jaws, when the Orca is stranded and sinking and Hooper has gone under in a shark cage, you might notice something shift. The shark is no longer just an elaborate puppet, there's also footage of a real great white shark mixed in.

This footage was shot by a second unit team across the world from Martha's Vineyard — in Australia, specifically. Australia (which is surrounded by the Pacific, Antarctic, and Indian Oceans) has sharks in its waters, but that wasn't the only reason the team went there. Ron and Valerie Taylor, accomplished divers who had shot footage of sharks before, lived in Australia and worked on the second unit team.

The shots of the shark thrashing around the cage, destroying it? Those were captured by the second unit team; the shark is much more agile and flexible in those shots than the animatronic could be, too. Shooting the cage scene this way wound up having big ramifications on the story of "Jaws." When the second unit team finally prodded the shark to destroy the cage, it was empty. Hence, the script was rewritten so Hooper swims out of the cage and survives, rather than dying like in Peter Benchley's original "Jaws" novel.

"Jaws" has two of the finest jump scares in movies. One is the shark unexpectedly popping out of the water. (Cue the iconic "Jaws" line: "You're gonna need a bigger boat.") The other comes earlier in the film when Brody and Hooper go out on the latter's boat at night. They come across the abandoned fishing boat of Ben Gardner (Craig Kingsbury), one of the fishermen after the bounty on the shark. Hooper dives in and discovers a hole in the side of the boat, out from which floats Gardner's bitten-off head.

This shot was actually filmed after principal photography on "Jaws" had wrapped. But going all the way back to the ocean for a single reshoot just wasn't practical. So, instead, the shot was captured inside an Encino, California swimming pool owned by the editor of "Jaws," Verna Fields. Fields maintained an editing room at her pool house, which is where she and Spielberg worked together editing "Jaws," so the pool was readily accessible to them.

In "Spielberg: The First 10 Years," the director recounted how, during test screenings, the shot of the head didn't scare the audience like he wanted. Getting "greedy," he decided to tweak it:

"I went and spent three thousand bucks of my own money to have the art department build the side of Ben Gardner's boat out of balsa wood, to match the one we had shot before. We cut a hole in it, used the same head, and filmed it using a double for Richard Dreyfuss, in the swimming pool of my editor Verna Fields ... Originally, the head was just there, so I shot it coming through the hole about nine different ways."

Fields was an absolutely vital part of making "Jaws" the film we know — take, for instance, how she sewed together the best takes of Robert Shaw performing Quint's U.S.S. Indianapolis monologue. Without her pool and that sublime reshot jump scare, "Jaws" would be a touch less perfect than it is.