Where the Coast Guard boathouse once stood in Menemsha harbor, the shore slopes slowly down to the sea, revealing a beach long hidden from view. Stretching out from this new landscape stands a concrete dock, a gray slab cutting across the view to the Sound.

This panorama, a significant alteration of how this small fishing harbor looked for almost 70 years, comes into view one year after the massive fire that ravaged the Coast Guard boathouse and much of the drive-on dock.

The damage the fire caused was limited, largely due to the direction of the wind that day — it blew the smoke and flames towards the ocean, away from the fishing shacks that parade down the road to the drive-on dock, the Galley and the Menemsha Market.

One year after the fire, the dock is almost finished. Electricity is now available to the boats that line up in floating rows to park here; water is coming next week, hopefully in time for a ceremony on Tuesday, marking its completion. The ceremony begins at 5 p.m.

Stephen Broderick, a fisherman who brought his boat back to this side of the harbor a few weeks ago, said, “I think everyone’s pleased with the dock. It’s amazing that they got it together in this amount of time, and the town did a great job.” Mr. Broderick’s sons, Tim and Dan Broderick, dove into the harbor the day of the fire to save his fishing vessel, the Four Kids.

There is still work to be done — a crane perches in the middle of the harbor, buttressing the Coast Guard loading dock, and unwanted rocks speckle the parking lot. A plastic wheelbarrow stands beside the chain-link entrance to the Coast Guard dock, a receptacle for the obstacles to full rehabilitation that still stand in the way.

Fred Croft, the operator of the Bike Ferry that shuttles cyclists and passengers from Menemsha to West Basin and back again, said that everything has been back to normal for awhile. “All it really meant was that the Coast Guard guys lost their weight room, and it opened up the view a little too, but we do miss the old building. It was such a classic building, and it’d been here since the 1940s,” he said.

Andrew Smith, who works in the harbor as an assistant wharfinger for the town of Chilmark, helped to rein in the destruction last summer, dodging flaming boats that floated through the harbor, and letting sink the ones that were beyond salvation. For him, too, the harbor has lost its centerpiece. “Yeah, I miss the old building. It was in Jaws! So, you know, it was cool to have it there. As a kid, I played hide-and-seek under there,” he said.

Ann McGhee, who paints in Menemsha every day in the summer, was there the day of the fire. Sometimes she sets up her easel on the drive-on dock, but luckily, not on that day. She recalls being terrified, and scared for the boats parked on that side of the harbor. While a few boats were lost, fortunately no one was hurt.

She misses the Coast Guard boathouse, not only as a casualty of the fire, but also for what it means in her painting. “I’ve been out here about a week and a day, but I haven’t been inspired,” she said. “I was talking with another painter who said that he wasn’t inspired either, and he thought it was because there was no boathouse. That building really closed in the landscape and framed it.”

She has checked out the new dock as a visual resource, and finds it provides the same view of ships passing in and out of the channel, though the feeling is not quite the same. “You don’t get the creaking like you did with old dock when you drove over it,” she said.

While that old wood might have provided a quaint creaking that matched the hum of the harbor and the gentle lapping of the waves against the pylons, it provided the primary tinderbox on the day of the fire. Because the boathouse and the dock were both quite old and corroded, they caught fire more easily, allowed the flames to spread to the boats and lines that relied on the structure.

In the days and weeks following the fire, the harbor was in disarray, requiring a large cleanup effort from the Coast Guard and the harbor master’s office. “It was really messy for awhile — all these big logs from the drive-on dock kept breaking off and drifting around the harbor. We were just trying to keep things in order,” Mr. Smith recalled.

The period of construction was challenging for the fishermen, but the new dock solves those problems. Mike Figuerick, the captain of the dragger, Kimberleen, said: “It was a little problematic tying up because the Coast Guard made us tie up all the way down [in the inner harbor], so we had to move around a little.”

Nevertheless, the height of summer brings a new beginning for the harbor. “The new dock is beautiful,” Mr. Figuerick said, “It’s a beautiful job they did. Everything is back to normal now.”

The ceremony Tuesday with Chilmark selectmen and the Coast Guard begins at 5 p.m. on the dock. All are welcome. Visitors are asked to park at the beach and walk over.