Lewis G. King of Vineyard Haven, who for decades owned and operated Blueberry Hill Farm, a Chilmark inn renowned for its fine fare, impeccable accommodations and hospitality, died Nov. 6 at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. He was 97.

Born in West Orange, N.J., on March 29, 1913, a son of Emil and Josephine (Turtletaub) King, he was educated in West Orange public schools. As a young teenager he came to the Vineyard where he worked for the Giordano family of Oak Bluffs. Though in adulthood he held executive jobs in high-powered New York companies, he never forgot his early love of the Vineyard and determined that one day he would return to the Island.

In 1939, he married Louise Tate, a secretary for the United States Leather Co. in New York city. His bride was just ending a first marriage that had lasted less than a year. The couple made their home in Forest Hills, but Mr. King always talked longingly of Martha’s Vineyard, and in 1941 he took his wife on her first Vineyard visit. She quickly became as enamored as he was.

In 1941 he went to work for the Loft Candy Corp. of Long Island City, N.Y., where he was director of real estate for the company’s 227-store chain. The job notwithstanding, the young couple began contemplating a year-round Island future and in 1951 bought the old Hammett Farm and 120 acres on the North Road in Chilmark. They also purchased land in Chilmark’s West Meadow, where they built three ranch-style redwood summer cottages to rent to seasonal visitors.

As soon as they could, they began renovation of the Hammett farmhouse as the centerpiece for the inn they were planning. To accommodate more inn patrons, they built two guest cottages. There was also a house for Mr. King’s parents on the property. Within a year of their North Road purchase, they had opened Blueberry Hill Farm, an American Plan inn whose price included breakfast, lunch and dinner for its 16 to 18 guests. For beachgoers, there was always a tasty, exquisitely boxed lunch. The inn’s gourmet meals were prepared under the direction of Mrs. King, a skilled chef, and served family-style at one long table in the farmhouse, with Mr. King as the attentive host. Like any good host, he poured the wine for his guests and made them feel that they were his best friends.

By 1956, it began to be clear to the Loft Candy Corp. that they were likely to lose Mr. King, and in an effort to keep him from becoming a year-round Islander, the company promoted him to vice president of both its candy division and its realty company. It was all to no avail, however. Not only had the Kings decided that innkeeping was their métier, but Mr. King sensed that dieting was on the rise in America and that chocolate candy might be going out of style. Soon Chilmark was their only home. In 1961, Lew King and Louise Tate King divorced. Mr. King continued to operate the inn, while Louise Tate King opened a summer French restaur ant in North Tisbury.

As much a devotee of good cooking as his ex-wife, Mr. King continued to see that the fare at his inn was of the highest quality. He always made sure that the finest Island ingredients some grown on inn land were served at Blueberry Hill Farm. Summer after summer, his satisfied guests would return. Among them was the actor Paul Newman.

Inn guests could be certain that once a week they would be served French Mediterranean fish soup, bouillabaisse, and that there would be Island bay scallops and brisket of beef on the menu. Ever the perfectionist, Mr. King, in ordering the fish for his soup from Poole’s Fish Market at Menemsha, would insist that the bones be left in the chunks of bluefish and mackerel, flounder and scup that went into the bouillabaisse. It was the bones, he said, that provided the soup with its with rich, full flavor. The steamed brisket of beef was cooked without liquid, with only a layer of thinly sliced tomato and onion, the meat itself providing the juice.

Solicitous of his guests, he allowed them access to his own Stonewall Beach Association property, although it annoyed other association members who felt the property should be used by Mr. King himself, not by inn guests.

Two days before Christmas in 1966, he narrowly escaped losing everything when a fierce fire destroyed the main house. Happily, with firemen from every Island town except Edgartown helping to fight the blaze, the rest of the property was saved. And just a little more than a year later, thanks to the efforts of the late Chilmark contractor Herbert R. Hancock, a new house had been built to replace the old one.

He ruffled some feathers with his contested purchase in 1971 of the former Rex Weeks house in the center of Chilmark that is now Conroy and Co. Real Estate; the Community Market that is now the Chilmark Store, a launderette, and a gas station. The same year, he married Carolyn Granducci of Foster’s Point, Me. and St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The marriage was brief.

Long interested in politics, Lew King successfully ran for Chilmark selectman in 1959 and continued to be reelected until 1978. During those years, the town passed its first zoning bylaws and purchased Lucy Vincent Beach. An ardent conservationist, as the years passed and he saw more and more “rape” of the Island’s natural beauty by conscienceless developers, he spoke out against it vehemently in letters to the editor of the Gazette. In 1978 and again in 1987, he expressed his concern for the Vineyard’s traffic congestion, waste disposal problems, drinking water problems, the pollution of Island ponds and the attendant killing of fish and shellfish.

“Unless we all wake up,” he wrote, “the continued growth and development will surely increase our suffering and ruin what we all have cherished as a unique way of life.” He felt strongly about the Island’s need to support and strengthen the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, and in 1960 gave a conservation restriction on 56.2 acres of the inn land to the Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation. In giving the restriction, he said he felt it was important to preserve for those who would come after him the “precious and dwindling natural resources of the land.”

In 1994, feeling it was finally time to retire, he sold the inn to Bob and Carolyn Burgess, a Connecticut couple who modernized it with a gym and a lap pool, a tennis court and health food restaurant, but who wished overall to retain the low-key getaway Lew King had envisioned. For some time after that, Mr. King continued to live on the grounds in the little house he had built for his parents. In 2000 the Burgesses sold the inn to a private group that planned to convert it to a high-end member club. The plan was soured by the economic downturn and the future of the property is currently unknown.

In recent years, Mr. King had lived at Lambert’s Cove in Vineyard Haven with Esther Hilton, a former longtime inn employe who was his devoted companion.

He always enjoyed working out of doors — in the garden or in the woods or on the north shore tending his lobster pots. Well into his 80s he was still cutting firewood. He always enjoyed a good hand of poker and was an expert at the game. He was an inveterate reader of books about politics and of mysteries. In the winter, he enjoyed spending time in the Caribbean where he had a home for a time on Palm Island. Barbuda, Puerto Rico and Anguilla were other favorite winter getaways.

In addition to Mrs. Hilton, he is survived by his daughter, Hilary Flye and her husband, Tom, of Portland, Ore.; two granddaughters, Jennifer Marlin of Portland and Anna Louise Berner of Richmond, Calif.; and two great-grandchildren, Asher Marlin of Portland and Thomas Arnett of Richmond.

The memorial service will be private.