Fire Island
Fire Island is the large center island of the outer barrier islands parallel to the South Shore of Long Island in the U.S. state of New York.
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy once again divided Fire Island into two islands. Together, these two islands are about long and vary between wide. The land area of Fire Island is. The majority of the island's land is protected by Fire Island National Seashore which was created in 1964 in response to a protest movement against the construction of a highway through the island. As of 2024, life for Fire Island visitors and residents was defined by restrictions on personal automobile use meant to preserve the island's unique character and ecosystems.
Fire Island is part of Suffolk County. It lies within the towns of Babylon, Islip, and Brookhaven, containing two villages and several hamlets. All parts of the island not within village limits are part of the Fire Island census-designated place, which had a permanent population of 777 at the 2020 census, though that expands to thousands of residents and tourists during the summer. The neighborhoods of Cherry Grove and Fire Island Pines are known as gay-friendly tourist destinations.
History
Etymology
The origin of Fire Island's name is uncertain. It is believed its Native American name was Sictem Hackey. The Secatogues were a tribe in the area of the current town of Islip. It was part of what was also called the "Seal Islands".The name of Fire Island first appeared on a deed in 1789.
Historian Richard Bayles suggests that the name derives from a misinterpretation or corruption of the Dutch word vijf, or in another version vier, referring to the number of islands near the Fire Island inlet, a view echoed by Robert Caro, who suggests in The Power Broker that the island was named to reflect four inlets that have since disappeared. At times histories have referred to it in the plural, as "Fire Islands", because of the inlet breaks.
While the western portion of the island was referred to as Fire Island for many years, the eastern portion was referred to as Great South Beach until 1920, when widespread development caused the whole land mass to be called Fire Island.
Settlement
Indigenous Native Americans lived on Long Island and Fire Island for many centuries before Europeans arrived. There exists a myth that the islands were occupied by "thirteen tribes" "neatly divided into thirteen tribal units, beginning with the Canarsie who lived in present-day Brooklyn and ending with the Montauk on the far eastern end of the island." But modern ethnographic research indicates that before the European invasion, Long Island and Fire Island were occupied by "indigenous groups organized into village systems with varying levels of social complexity. They lived in small communities that were connected in an intricate web of kinship relations there were probably no native peoples living in tribal systems on Long Island until after the Europeans arrived. The communities appear to have been divided into two general culture areas that overlapped in the area known today as the Hempstead Plains . The western groups spoke the Delaware-Munsee dialect of Algonquian and shared cultural characteristics such as the longhouse system of social organization with their brethren in what is now New Jersey and Delaware. The linguistic affiliation of the eastern groups is less well understood Goddard concluded that the languages here are related to the southern New England Algonquian dialects, but he could only speculate on the nature of these relationships . Working with a few brief vocabulary lists of Montauk and Unquachog, he suggested that the Montauk might be related to Mohegan-Pequot and the Unquachog might possibly be grouped with the Quiripi of western Connecticut. The information on the Shinnecock was too sparse for any determination The most common pattern of indigenous life on Long Island prior to the intervention of the whites was the autonomous village linked by kinship to its neighbors.""Most of the 'tribal' names with which we are now familiar do not appear to have been recognized by either the first European observers or by the original inhabitants until the process of land purchases began after the first settlements were established. We simply do not know what these people called themselves, but all the ethnographic data on North American Indian cultures suggest that they identified themselves in terms of lineage and clan membership. The English and Dutch were frustrated by this lack of structure because it made land purchase so difficult. Deeds, according to the European concept of property, had to be signed by identifiable owners with authority to sell and have specific boundaries on a map. The relatively amorphous leadership structure of the Long Island communities, the imprecise delineation of hunting ground boundaries, and their view of the land as a living entity to be used rather than owned made conventional European real estate deals nearly impossible to negotiate. The surviving primary records suggest that the Dutch and English remedied this situation by pressing cooperative local sachems to establish a more structured political base in their communities and to define their communities as "tribes" with specific boundaries The Montauk, under the leadership of Wyandanch in the mid-seventeenth century, and the Matinnecock, under the sachems Suscaneman and Tackapousha, do appear to have developed rather tenuous coalitions as a result of their contact with the English settlers."
"An early example of intervention into Native American political institutions is a 1664 agreement wherein the East Hampton and Southampton officials appointed a sunk squaw named Quashawam to govern both the Shinnecock and the Montauk."
- William "Tangier" Smith held title to the entire island in the 17th century, under a royal patent from Thomas Dongan. The remnants of Smith's Manor of St. George are open to the public in Shirley, New York. "On May 25, 1691 Col. William "Tangier" Smith purchased from the Indian, John Mayhew the enormous acreage, later to be known as the Manor of St. George. He then set aside 175 acres of the land occupied by the Unkechaug Indians on the west side of the Mastic River at Poosepatuck Creek to be theirs for the annual rent of two ears of corn. The Poosepatuck Indian Reservation is still in existence today, however it has shrunk to 55 acres due to unscrupulous land dealings by early officials."
- The first large house was built in 1795 in Cherry Grove by Jeremiah Smith. Smith was said to have lured ships to their doom and killed the crews.
- In the early 19th century when slavery in New York was still legal, slave runners built stockades on the island by the Fire Island Inlet.
- The first Fire Island Lighthouse was built in 1825 and was replaced by the current lighthouse in 1858.
- In 1855, David S. S. Sammis bought near the Fire Island Lighthouse and built the Surf Hotel at what today is Kismet. Sammis operated the hotel until 1892, when the state took it over. In 1908, it became the first state park on Long Island.
- In 1868, Archer and Elizabeth Perkinson bought the land around Cherry Grove and Fire Island Pines. They built a hotel in 1880.
- In 1887, the Life-Saving Service established 11 staffed lifesaving stations on the island.
- In 1892, troops were called out to suppress a potential riot at Democrat Point over a cholera panic.
- In 1908, Ocean Beach was established, followed by Saltaire in 1910.
- In 1921, the Perkinsons sold the land around Cherry Grove in small lots. Bungalows from the newly closed Camp Upton in Yaphank were ferried over the Great South Bay to build the new community. Duffy's Hotel was built in 1930.
- The Great Hurricane of 1938 devastated much of the island and made it appear undesirable to many. However, Duffy's Hotel remained relatively undamaged. According to legend, the gay population began to concentrate in Cherry Grove at Duffy's Hotel with Christopher Isherwood and W. H. Auden dressed as Dionysus and Ganymede and carried aloft on a gilded litter by a group of singing followers. The gay influence was continued in the 1960s when male model John B. Whyte developed Fire Island Pines. The Pines currently has some of the most expensive property on the island and accounts for two-thirds of the island's swimming pools.
- In 1964, Robert Moses built the Captree Causeway to the western end of the island. Opponents, fearing that this was the beginning of plans for the continuation of Ocean Parkway, which would have run down the middle of the island, organized and eventually stopped the parkway.
- In September 1964, Lyndon Johnson signed a bill creating Fire Island National Seashore.
Shipwrecks
Possibly because of the inexperienced first mate now serving as captain, the ship slammed into a sandbar less than 100 yards from Fire Island on July 19, 1850, around 3:30 am Many of the other passengers and crew members abandoned ship. The first mate, Mr. Bangs, urged Fuller and Ossoli to try to save themselves and their child as he himself jumped overboard, later claiming he believed Fuller had wanted to be left behind to die. On the beach, people arrived with carts hoping to salvage any cargo washed ashore. None made any effort to rescue the crew or passengers of the Elizabeth, though they were only 50 yards from shore. Most of those aboard attempted to swim to shore, leaving Fuller and Ossoli and Angelino some of the last on the ship. Ossoli was thrown overboard by a massive wave and, after the wave had passed, a crewman who witnessed the event said Fuller could not be seen.
Henry David Thoreau traveled to New York City at the urging of Emerson to search the shore, but neither Fuller's body nor that of her husband was ever recovered. Angelino's had washed ashore. Few of their possessions were found other than some of the child's clothes and a few letters. Fuller's manuscript on the rise and fall of the 1849 Roman Republic, which she described as "what is most valuable to me if I live of any thing", was also lost. A memorial to Fuller was erected on the beach at Fire Island in 1901 through the efforts of Julia Ward Howe. A cenotaph to Fuller and Ossoli, under which Angelino is buried, is in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The inscription reads, in part: