McCollum - Fire Island

IMAGES
of Modern America

FIRE ISLAND

A school bus drives along the beach on the west of Fire Island around 1983. While automobile use is largely restricted due to Fire Island National Seashore driving regulations, an exception is the transportation of resident schoolchildren from pre-kindergarten right up through high school graduation. (Courtesy NPS, Fire Island National Seashore.)

ON THE FRONT COVER: Clockwise from top left: The Voyager (courtesy Lani Aughenbaugh; see ).

ON THE BACK COVER: From left to right: Aerial view of the breach at Old Inlet (courtesy Diane Abell, National Park Service; see ).

IMAGES
of Modern America

FIRE ISLAND

Shoshanna McCollum

Copyright 2014 by Shoshanna McCollum
ISBN 978-1-4671-2171-2
Ebook ISBN 9781439645734

Published by Arcadia Publishing
Charleston, South Carolina

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013952058

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In memory of my aunt Alma Schwartz, for her love of words.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Families from all over the country contributed pictures from their private collections toward this effort, as did some of the finest professional photographers working on Long Island today. Working with all of them has been an honor. Please take note of the photographic credits and consider visiting the websites when cited. The public outreach efforts of Marshall Brown, president of Save the Great South Bay, Cait Russell of LongIsland.com, and Liz Finnegan of the Islip Bulletin proved indispensable in getting us all together. Special thanks go to the men and women who agreed to have their portraits taken for inclusion in this book, as well as Kathryn Johnson of the Point O Woods Archives; Nancy Solmon, president of Long Island Traditions; columnist Karl Grossman; cartographer Paul Pugliese; and the Barbash family for providing essential background information. And fondest appreciation goes to the staff of Fire Island National Seashore. Decades of FINS file photographs compose the backbone of this work, and they are credited by the abbreviation NPS.

INTRODUCTION

Whatever you do, dont show pictures of sunsets, cautioned Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall to Murray Barbash the day he testified before Congress. In the early 1960s, Barbash, as president of the Citizens Committee for a Fire Island National Seashore, was speaking before the lawmakers of the land. Udalls words may sound like sacrilege, but Barbash understood the message immediately: Sentimentality would not win the day.

The threat of development was nothing new to Fire Island. At the prospect of the virgin primeval woodland being extinguished by developers in 1952, a forward-thinking couple by the name of Dunlop founded Wildlife Preserves Incorporated. This modest organization acquired land parcels in the Sunken Forest to keep them pristine. The fight to save the forest foreshadowed events to come.

In 1962, a historic noreaster known as the Ash Wednesday Storm wreaked havoc along Fire Islands oceanfront. Damage of such scale had not been witnessed there since the Hurricane of 1938. Long Island State Parks commissioner Robert Moses had long been anxious to build a highway on Fire Island, and he seized the Ash Wednesday Storm as his opportunity to do it. Another citizenry might have been more complacent, but not the people of Fire Island.

Babylon-based attorney and Dunewood resident Irving Like methodically approached the problem as a civil matter. He learned of the 1955 Atlantic and Gulf Coast Shoreline survey by the National Park Service that identified Fire Island as one of the most important undeveloped shoreline areas in the eastern United States and, therefore, a prime candidate for national seashore declaration. Soon, the Citizens Committee for Fire Island National Seashore took shape. Every Fire Island community had a representing liaison, and there were also partners from beyond: Federation of New York State Bird Clubs, various chambers of commerce, the town boards of Islip and Brookhaven, and many others. This was not just a Fire Island effort anymore.

Six separate bills on the subject had been introduced between 1958 and 1964. The original boundaries for the proposed national seashore spanned 52 miles, stretching between Fire Island Inlet and the village of Southampton. This did not go over well, and the scope was subsequently reduced. Then, a woman by the name of Priscilla Roe, representing the Suffolk County League of Women Voters, petitioned Congress to amend the Fire Island bill to include a no-roads amendment. This addition stalled bill approval until it almost died before leaving committee. Some congressmen admonished Roe for meddling in government affairs. I can take care of my enemies. God protect me from my friends, said Democratic New York representative Otis G. Pike, according to a Newsday article of the era penned by Don Smith. If she had come to me, I would have pleaded with her to leave things alone. The bill was going well.

However, Roe had the foresight to recognize that, without such a provision, the Citizens Committee might be successful in preventing Robert Moses from laying his highway, but would be powerless to stop another entity from building a road in the future, especially once the island was under federal jurisdiction. Her insistence on this point kept the bills integrity intact when Pres. Lyndon Johnson finally signed it into law.

It is remarkable that in a nation so enamored with automobile driving, Fire Islands cause took on the momentum that it did. Maybe the rapid postwar development of Long Island raised collective consciousness that some places had to be set aside before it was too late.

Waterborne transportation for Fire Island via a system of private ferry companies had existed for many decades. Private boats were also an easy fit. Southern New York is a collection of islands, after all, so residents of greater Long Island handle and enjoy their watercraft with ease.

However, it is a myth that Fire Island is automobile free. They are important here, just as they are elsewhere. The labyrinth of regulations that surround automobile driving on Fire Island has become very complex. Fire Island National Seashore does bestow driving permits, but they come with caveats. These permits allow the small year-round population to manage during the off-seasonnine months out of the year when frequent ferry service is not to be had. The number of trips one can take on and off the island per day are limited, and in the summer, year-round residents must ride the ferry like everyone else. There is also a strict cap on how many resident permits are allowed island-wide. The much-coveted driving permit has on occasion been the source of fraud and bitterness between neighbors. This strange ripple is certainly something the passionate community activists who pursued a national seashore never anticipated.

Another specter with which Fire Island contended has been coastal flooding and beach erosion. The area may have a few good years, then it gets hit hard again. The pendulum swings. Through it all, a legacy even older than Fire Island National Seashore itself is a US Army Corps of Engineers study called the Fire Island to Montauk Point Reformulation Plan (FIMP.) With origins dating to the Eisenhower administration, this study without end, the funding of which could have financed actual beach nourishment projects several times over, has long vexed Fire Islanders. It has made them testy when experts speak before them full of rhetoric. It has enraged them when firsthand observations are casually dismissed. Yet, with that said, obstinance has not always served the Fire Islander particularly well.