Fire Island Lighthouse and Hike
by Courtney Jansen
Lighthouse History and Architecture
It was my first time visiting Fire Island. It is 32 miles long and the only developed barrier beach in the Unites States. We parked in the main parking lot, which is where all cars park from April to November, limiting the traffic on Fire Island. During these months, people navigate the island either by foot or bike. There were boardwalk paths to take to the beach and the lighthouse. While walking along the path, we encountered a few surprise critters! There was a fawn grazing on vegetation along the boardwalk, and she nonchalantly posed for her photoshoot. We learned the deer population on Fire Island began from deer swimming across the bay from the south shore of Long Island, looking for a new habitat. We also came across a woolly bear caterpillar inching along the boardwalk.
We walked onto the beach to enjoy the view. I was surprised to see a little sand cliff on the beach, called scarp, which is an erosional feature. Many of us took to running and jumping into the air off the sand ledge and found how well we could stick our landings. The less-coordinated among us were the ones to tumble into the sand, only to laugh it off and try again. The photo below shows the edge of the scarp on the bottom of the image, and the dark sand was lower and in front of the little sand cliff. You can see all of our footprints from jumping down.
We made our way to the lighthouse, and we learned that the lighthouse we climbed up and saw in front of us was the second lighthouse built on Fire Island. The first one was built in 1826, at 89 feet 3 inches high, and could be seen about 14.5 nautical miles away at sea. The lighthouse was plain stone, which made it difficult to see under different weather conditions and differentiate it from other lighthouses at the time. There were many shipwrecks that occurred, so new plans were made for the lighthouse in 1852. Instead of fixing the current lighthouse, a new one was built. The Connecticut River Stone that the first lighthouse was made of was used as the foundation of the second lighthouse. This lighthouse was built 168 feet tall and still stands today.
Due to new safety laws, all lighthouses by 1890 were uniquely colored and marked, so sailors could identify where they were approaching. The marks also make it easier to spot the towers under many weather conditions. In August 1891, the second lighthouse on Fire Island was painted with 2 black stripes and 2 white stripes, with black at the very top, followed by white, black, white.
While I was climbing the tower, I stopped to read the information at each window. Each description stated how thick the walls of the tower were at that point. I never knew lighthouses had much thicker walls at the base than the top. The first window landing, facing north, is located at the 26th step going up the lighthouse, and the walls are 8 feet thick. The walls, interestingly, are not solid. There are ventilation channels in the walls to allow moisture and condensation to drain. This also allowed the mortar to cure properly. It is thought that the tapered shape of the lighthouse was based on John Smeaton’s 1759 stone lighthouse near Plymouth, England. Smeaton’s lighthouse took the shape of an oak tree with its wider base rooted, and the curved, slimmer pillar above to keep the “center of gravity low.” The second window faces southwest, and its landing is located at the lighthouse’s 52nd step, where the walls of the tower are 6 feet 4 inches thick. Here, there was information regarding the tower’s decommission in 1974. The tower was determined to be in poor condition. The Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society raised $1.3 million, restored the lighthouse, and turned the light back on in 1986. The third window landing is at step 78, where the lighthouse walls are 5 feet 3 inches thick. From this window, facing southeast, the National Park Service Ranger Station, built in 1906, can be seen; it was originally a Navy radio station. The fourth window faces north, the landing is located at step 104, and the tower’s walls are 4 feet thick. An American flag can be seen out this window, and the height of the original lighthouse was about the same height as the flag pole. It is very neat to be able to visually compare the height of the old and current lighthouses, and it is evident why another was built.
Atop the lighthouse, we could see the entirety of Fire Island. Circling around the walkway at the top of the lighthouse, we could see Fire Island in all directions. The photo below shows the residential area of Fire Island in the distance straight ahead. We also watched a doe and her fawn walk around and cross over a boardwalk. We could see the water between the south shore of Long Island and see different features of the water and its currents from our vantage point as well. Up high, it was humbling. We could even spot Stony Brook Hospital! It is amazing how much can be seen from standing about 160 feet above the ground. Fire Island is beautiful, and I’d love to come back and explore it further.
Robert Moses and Jones Beach
by Antonio Fanizzi
For this week’s trip, our class visited the beautiful and iconic Fire Island on the South shore of Long Island. The first thing we did when we got there was go on a long hike through the fields and salt marshes. The nature we saw on this hike was breathtaking, especially when we came across some young fawns feeding on the bushes. At the end of our hike, we passed the iconic Fire Island lighthouse and ended up on the sandy Fire Island beach. The high tide had clearly left its mark on the beach by turning the shoreline into an enormous sand cliff that was around six feet deep. It was here on the beach beside these cliffs that we began our initial lesson on Fire Island’s early history.
Robert Moses was a New York metropolitan public official who may have been one of the most important men behind the Long Island tourism industry. His vision started on Jones Beach Island located directly west of Fire Island. It was the 1920’s when Moses first pitched his vision for a Long Island beach attraction for tourists from all over the world. Back then, what we know as Jones Beach was actually uninhabitable swamp land filled with lots of biting insects, so they had a lot of work ahead of them. It took several years, but his project was finally finished in August of 1929. The earliest visitors were impressed by how much detail was put into the establishments. For example, they had baby bottle warming stations for mothers and the handles on the drinking fountains were shaped like pirate ship wheels to stay true to the nautical theme of the beach. This was far from Robert’s only remarkable project as he ended up putting a total of over six billion dollars into his life’s work including Shea Stadium and the New York World’s Fair. The Western end of Fire Island is now linked to Jones Beach by the Robert Moses Causeway which was funded by, of coarse, Robert Moses. Many people today blame him for the traffic problem on Long Island because he designed most of Long Island’s highways to lead to the beaches and increase tourism.
Perhaps one of the greatest factors behind the success of this new beach was that the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began in October of 1929, just two months after the beach opened. Within the first month, one third of America’s GDP had disappeared. Long Island actually had it a lot better than most of the country, especially New York City, because unlike in the city, Long Island had good access to food and farmland. The Long Island fishing fishing industry was extremely important at this time so they had a train route called the “Fisherman’s Special”. It carried New York fishermen from Penn Station to Long Island, and it even had freezers that they could store their catches in. Long Islanders were praising Jones Beach because it created new employment opportunities that generated several million dollars for the Long Island economy. Thanks to Robert Moses, Jones Beach was named the greatest beach in the world three times, which is the maximum limit. I cannot help but compare Moses to the Fire Island high tide as they both have the ability to shape their surrounding environments into breathtaking sights.
Fire Island, and Asset to Long Island from the Great Depression to Now
by Makenzie Conover
During the beginning of the 20th century, Long Island was seen as an escape from the hustle and bustle of New York City, a place of peace and serenity set apart from the grimy city conditions. It was considered secluded enough that it was used as a quarantine location during disease outbreaks, such as the outbreak of influenza in 1917. There was also an outbreak of cholera in 1892 aboard a ship sailing from Europe to New York City, where the passengers landed and were kept on Fire Island until it was decided that quarantine was no longer necessary.
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Figure 1:
Ship and its passengers during the cholera outbreak of 1892.
Source: Fire Island Museum |
New communities were on the rise, distinguished by their own personalities and traditions that were falling into place, and projects such as Robert Moses and his plans for the creation of Jones beach on Fire Island as a sought-out destination were being finalized. However, Long Island became more than an escape from the busy city life and pretty scenery when the Great Depression hit. The worst stage of the Great Depression was between 1931 and 1932, where approximately one third of the United States’ entire GDP was gone and continued to plummet more still. People didn’t have enough to eat, and breadlines weren’t the best solution for city areas since the amount of food available for distribution was often based on how much businesses and people were able to donate. People in the city began to grow small plants on their fire escapes just for a little extra food that wouldn’t cost them any money.
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Figure 2: Fire escape in New York City during the Great Depression. Along the top of the photo, multiple planting pots are visible, showing that people used the space on their fire escape to grow food when necessary.
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People who lived out on Long Island and Fire Island were better off than the people in the city however. This is because Long Island had settlements and communities but with a huge amount of land that they had access to as well as ocean access. For food they could go fishing, clamming, basically obtaining anything available from the ocean without having to spend the money. Smaller scale farming also became more common for sustaining these communities during the era of the Great Depression. Some families sent children out to relatives and friends in Long Island and Fire Island because they were more likely to have access to enough food than if they had stayed in the city, also relieving pressure from the families left behind in the city with fewer mouths to feed. The Fisherman’s Special became a popular way for families to obtain food outside of the city. With this system, fishermen were sent by train to Montauk at five o’clock in the morning. The train was a series of ice boxes for fishermen to bring their catch back from Montauk and keep it preserved long enough to bring back to feed their families. Because of the state of living during this era, Long Island gained a reputation for being more than what it been seen as before. It was a place able to sustain its inhabitants enough that even when the economy was failing, living conditions were in significantly better shape than other areas of the country.
Despite the public and isolative advantages of Fire Island in the past, today it is still considered remarkable and is sought out by may Long Islanders and city residents as a place to escape to and enjoy the natural beauty it beholds. Many people have seasonal homes along the coast of Fire Island because it offers them a beloved reprieve from busy city life, and others have built homes for permanent living, 337 people to be exact. Robert Moses beach was elected the best beach in the world for 3 years and continues to see hundreds of thousands of people every season. Standing on the beach with the class and taking the time to thoroughly experience the serenity and picturesque quality of Fire Island gave us all a new appreciation for this beloved treasure of Long Island.
Fire Island Lighthouse’s Fresnel Lens
by Josh Farber
One stop on our field trip to the Fire Island Lighthouse was to the Fresnel Lens Building, which now houses the historic First Order Fresnel Lens that illuminated the current lighthouse from its construction in 1858 until 1933. At the time, it was the largest lens of its kind, and magnified light to be visible by ships up to 21 nautical miles away.
The light was an important one for ships coming from Europe, since it was the first lighthouse visible during the journey. The Montauk Point Lighthouse, which we visited a few weeks ago, was too far north for shipping vessels coming from Europe to see it, since it was outside of the main shipping lanes. Until switched to kerosene fuel in the 1880s, the lighthouse relied on sperm whale oil and lard to illuminate the light. Also in the earlier years, the keeper would have to turn a crank every 4-½ hours to keep the rotation of the light in motion. The light would be visible for five seconds out of every minute.
In 1931, the lighthouse became nearly three times brighter when an incandescent oil vapor lamp was installed, which vaporized preheated kerosene to burn a silk mantle. This replaced the Funck Hydraulic Lamp, which dated back to 1869. Together, the lens and lamp would continue to provide light until 1933, when the lens was replaced by one from the former Shinnecock Lighthouse, which was decommissioned in 1931.
After being dismantled, the lens was shipped to Philadelphia, where is was on display at the Franklin Institute until 2000. At that time, the National Park Service was interested in bringing the lens back home to Fire Island, despite not having a suitable location to display the lens. Packed up into more than 30 crates, the lens went into storage until the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society constructed the current Fresnel Lens Building adjacent to the lighthouse, which opened in 2011. Seeing the enormous lens really made an impact to our visit, especially since we saw it right before climbing the lighthouse tower.
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| The First Order Fresnel Lens on display at the Fresnel Lens Building at the Fire Island Lighthouse. |
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| Looking through the lens, which flipped the image of classmates standing on the other side. |
Fire Island
by John Hardie
This week we visited Fire Island on our Friday field trip course. I was excited to see what was in store for me considering I had never been there before. After parking in the main parking lot, we took a walk to the beach and observed the erosional features of the beach. As we ate lunch, we discussed how longshore drift was gradually extending the length of Fire Island westward. This is because sediment is eroded from the east end of Long Island by waves coming from the East. All of the sediment is then carried along the south shore of Long Island in the westward direction by the longshore current.
The talk of this erosion led to the fact that the lighthouse was not built where it stands today. Rather it was built a few hundred feet west of the current location. After lunch, we began walking towards the lighthouse. On the way there, we stopped to look at the ruins of the original lighthouse. Only the base remained, and the bricks that once supported a 90 foot tall lighthouse were falling apart. We learned that this location was once situated at the western end of Fire Island when the original lighthouse was first built, but longshore current has since extended the island by hundreds of meters. In addition to Longshore Current, regular waves coming in to Fire Island from the ocean are eroding the island and pushing it farther back towards the mainland of Long Island. This process occurs at a rate of about 1-2 feet per year, therefore at some point, Great South Bay will close up and Fire Island will crash into Long Island.
