55 Fun Facts About Long Island

Long Island stretches how far east from New York Harbor into the Atlantic?

Long Island measures about 118 miles from New York Harbor to its eastern tip, yet only 23 miles at its widest, which is why locals give directions by 'north shore' and 'south shore'.

Long Island's eight million-plus people are roughly what share of New York State's population?

Long Island's four counties hold about 8 million of New York State's roughly 20 million residents, close to 40%, which makes it the most populous island in the United States.

Which two of Long Island's four counties are also boroughs of New York City?

Kings and Queens are New York City boroughs: Kings County is Brooklyn and Queens County is the borough of the same name. Nassau and Suffolk make up what most people mean by 'the Island.'

The 1650s Dutch name for the island, 't Lange Eylandt, was paired on maps with what Native American name?

Dutch maps of the 1650s, such as the Visscher map, label the island ''t Lange Eylandt alias Matouwacs'; Paumanok, the name a later poet favored, comes from the same Algonquian tongue.

What formed Long Island's two east-west ridges, Harbor Hill and Ronkonkoma?

Ice Age glaciers built both ridges as terminal moraines during the last pulses of the Wisconsin glaciation about 21,000 years ago; the same ice scooped out the kettle lakes Ronkonkoma and Success.

What is the highest natural point on Long Island, at a modest 401 feet?

Jayne's Hill, at 401 feet, crowns West Hills County Park in the Town of Huntington, Suffolk County, and a boulder marker at its summit records the elevation.

Why are the island's northern beaches rocky while its southern beaches are fine white sand?

Glacial debris vs glacial outwash explains it: the North Shore sits on the rocky terminal moraine, while the South Shore's sand is outwash washed from the melting ice, fronted by barrier islands such as Fire Island.

In United States v. Maine (1985), the Supreme Court ruled Long Island is legally what?

The ruling turned Long Island Sound into a 'juridical bay', though the Board on Geographic Names still calls it an island because it is surrounded by water.

The far eastern tip of the North Fork, where the ferry to New London departs, is called what?

Orient Point, at the end of the North Fork, is the terminal of the Cross Sound Ferry to New London, Connecticut; the fork behind it has largely traded potato farms for vineyards.

The Battle of Long Island, fought on August 27, 1776, holds what distinction in the Revolutionary War?

Biggest engagement of the war by troops involved, it was also the first major battle after the Declaration of Independence; the British held New York until their evacuation in November 1783.

How did Washington save his army after losing the Battle of Long Island?

A night evacuation across the East River saved the army: on August 29-30, 1776, about 9,000 men were ferried to Manhattan under darkness and fog without the loss of a single life.

The Long Island Rail Road, chartered in 1834, is the oldest US railroad still doing what?

Operating under its original name and charter since April 1834, the LIRR was first meant to be part of a New York-to-Boston route via a ferry from Greenport, not a commuter line.

The LIRR gained a second Manhattan terminal in January 2023. What is it called?

The East Side Access project took more than a decade and gave the busiest commuter railroad in North America a direct route to Grand Central.

Levittown, the prototype postwar suburb, was called what when Levitt & Sons broke ground in 1947?

Island Trees was the name of the farmland community Levitt & Sons began building on in 1947; it became Levittown in 1948, when the company was finishing 30 houses a day, and the 1949 ranch model sold for $7,990.

Levittown's original leases contained a covenant restricting occupancy to whom?

Members of the Caucasian race were the only occupants clause 25 of the original leases allowed; after Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) made such covenants unenforceable, Levitt kept refusing Black buyers, and the town stayed nearly all-white for decades.

Which industrialist's Long Island estate, Oheka Castle, is the second-largest US private home?

The name is built from his initials, Otto Hermann Kahn; the 127-room house later doubled as Xanadu in Citizen Kane and starred in Taylor Swift's 'Blank Space' video.

Roughly how many Gold Coast mansions went up on the North Shore during its Gilded Age building spree?

Over 500 mansions rose on the North Shore between the 1890s and the 1930s; roughly 300 were torn down after World War II, and survivors include Old Westbury Gardens and the Vanderbilt Museum.

Which real Long Island peninsula, where Fitzgerald lived from 1922 to 1924, was the model for Gatsby's West Egg?

Great Neck, where Fitzgerald rented a house from 1922 to 1924, became new-money West Egg; old-money East Egg was Sands Point across Manhasset Bay, and the 'valley of ashes' was the Corona ash dumps.

Charles Lindbergh took off for Paris in 1927 from which Long Island airfield, now a shopping mall site?

Roosevelt Field took its name in 1919 from Theodore Roosevelt's son Quentin, killed in air combat in 1918; Lindbergh left it on May 20, 1927, and the field closed in 1951 to become a shopping center.

Long Island's cluster of early airfields earned it what nickname by the mid-1920s?

The museum of that name in Garden City holds a real Lunar Module, LM-13, built for the cancelled Apollo 19 mission.

For how many hours was Apollo 13's lunar module Aquarius designed to support two astronauts?

Aquarius was built to support two men for 45 hours yet kept three alive for about 90; Grumman staff later sent North American Rockwell a joke towing bill for hauling the command module home.

Which Long Island lab, on the old Camp Upton army base, produced Tennis for Two in 1958?

Brookhaven National Laboratory, opened on the former Camp Upton in 1947, is where physicist William Higinbotham built Tennis for Two on an analog computer and oscilloscope in 1958; seven Nobel Prizes trace to its research.

Which Long Island institution was run for decades by James Watson and counts eight Nobel laureates?

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was led by James Watson from 1968 to 2007 as director, president and chancellor; its darkest chapter was hosting the Eugenics Record Office from 1910 to 1939.

Which poet was born in 1819 in a West Hills farmhouse and raised in Brooklyn?

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in the West Hills farmhouse now kept as a state historic site; a nearby shopping mall also borrows his name.

The Montauk Point Light, completed in 1796, was authorized under which president?

George Washington signed the 1792 act of Congress that authorized the light, New York State's first lighthouse, which was completed in 1796 at the island's eastern tip.

The 168-foot Fire Island Lighthouse, lit in 1858, was decommissioned in 1974 and then what?

Relit in 1986 after a preservation campaign by the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society, the 168-foot tower had for decades been the first sight of America for immigrants arriving by ship.

Fire Island National Seashore was created in 1964 largely in response to protests against what?

A proposed highway along the barrier island, pushed by Robert Moses, sparked the protests that led Congress to create the seashore in 1964; most of Fire Island has no roads, so residents haul groceries in wagons along boardwalks.

Which Fire Island community calls itself 'America's First Gay and Lesbian Town'?

Cherry Grove and neighboring Fire Island Pines were established LGBT havens by the 1950s.

Jones Beach honors Major Thomas Jones, who ran what kind of business on the outer beach?

Whaling was Major Thomas Jones's trade: around 1700 he set up a shore whaling station on the outer beach that later took his name, continuing a hunt the Shinnecock had practiced for generations.

The Power Broker alleged Robert Moses built parkway bridges deliberately low to keep out what?

Buses could not pass under the parkway overpasses, Caro argued, which kept poorer families without cars away from Jones Beach; Moses himself never learned to drive.

The Long Island Expressway, Interstate 495, ends in which Suffolk town at its eastern terminus?

Chronic jams earned it the nickname 'the world's longest parking lot' long before its HOV lanes.

Nassau County was carved out in 1899 from the eastern 70 percent of which existing county?

Queens County lost its three eastern towns to form Nassau on January 1, 1899, a year after the rest of Queens joined New York City; the county's orange-and-blue colors come from the Dutch House of Orange-Nassau.

Long Island's first commercial vinifera vineyard of the 20th century was planted in 1973 in which hamlet?

Cutchogue is where Louisa and Alex Hargrave planted the first vines in 1973 on an old potato farm; the region has since gained three AVAs and a reputation for merlot and chardonnay.

According to the usual origin story, the Long Island Iced Tea was invented in 1972 for a contest at which bar?

The Oak Beach Inn is where bartender Robert 'Rosebud' Butt says he mixed it for a 1972 cocktail contest, though a Prohibition-era 'Old Man Bishop' of Kingsport, Tennessee has a rival claim; there is no tea in it.

Which five spirits go into a Long Island Iced Tea alongside a splash of cola?

Vodka, tequila, rum, gin and triple sec go in with sour mix and a splash of cola; the mix lands around 22 percent alcohol, several times a normal highball.

What architectural term for a symbol-shaped building comes from a 1931 roadside shop in Suffolk County?

A 'duck' is what Venturi and Scott Brown called such a building in Learning from Las Vegas (1972), after the Big Duck in Flanders; its eyes are Model T taillights and it joined the National Register in 1997.

In what year did the nine Pekin ducks that founded the Long Island duck breed arrive in New York from Shanghai?

1873 is when James Palmer's surviving Pekins reached New York after the voyage from Shanghai; their descendants became the Long Island duck, and Pekins account for the great majority of US duck meat.

The Islanders' widely mocked 1995 logo, dropped after two seasons, showed what?

A fisherman holding a stick, often compared to the Gorton's mascot, was the 1995 crest that earned the nickname 'fishsticks'; it lasted two seasons before the classic map-of-Long-Island logo returned.

Since 2021 the Islanders have played at UBS Arena, built next to which famous Long Island racetrack?

Belmont Park in Elmont is the traditional home of the Belmont Stakes, the mile-and-a-half third leg of the Triple Crown known as the 'Test of the Champion.'

Secretariat won the 1973 Belmont Stakes in a record 2:24 by how many lengths?

31 lengths was Secretariat's margin in the 1973 Belmont, run in 2:24 for the mile and a half; the winner gets a blanket of about 700 white carnations, hence 'Run for the Carnations.'

The Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, opened in 1972, sits on 63 acres of what former facility?

Mitchel Air Force Base, closed in 1961, gave up part of its land for the arena; the Grateful Dead played it 42 times, more than any other act, and Billy Joel closed it in 2015 and reopened it in 2017.

Which ABA team, led by Julius Erving, won two championships at the Nassau Coliseum in the 1970s?

The New York Nets won ABA titles in 1974 and 1976 with Erving, who grew up in Hempstead and Roosevelt; a season after the 1976 ABA-NBA merger the team moved to New Jersey.

Billy Joel was born in the Bronx but grew up in the Levittown section of which Long Island community?

Hicksville was home: the Joels lived at 20 Meeting Lane in the Levitt-built part of the hamlet, and his 'The Downeaster Alexa' is about the struggles of Long Island's commercial fishermen.

Which philanthropist donated the Stony Brook land on which the state university campus opened in 1962?

Ward Melville, the shoe magnate behind Thom McAn, gave more than 400 acres in Stony Brook, and the university moved there in 1962 from its first home on the Planting Fields estate.

The Amityville Horror house at 112 Ocean Avenue was the scene of six murders in November 1974 by whom?

Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot his parents and four siblings there on November 13, 1974; the Lutz family bought the house a year later for $80,000, fled after 28 days, and the address was later changed to deter sightseers.

The 'Montauk Project' conspiracy theory inspired which Netflix series, originally titled Montauk?

Stranger Things began as a pitch called Montauk, built on the Montauk Project books, whose authors invited readers to take them as science fiction or non-fiction; the Duffer brothers moved the setting to Hawkins, Indiana.

The Shinnecock Indian Nation of Southampton won federal recognition in what year?

2010 brought federal recognition, decades after the nation first petitioned in 1978; its Labor Day powwow is among the largest in the country, and its land claim covers the Shinnecock Hills golf course.

The Hamptons occupy which part of Long Island?

The South Fork holds the towns of Southampton and East Hampton; the string of Hamptons villages runs from Westhampton out to Montauk at the tip.

Which body of water lies along the North Shore, separating Nassau and Suffolk from Connecticut?

Long Island Sound separates the North Shore from Connecticut and opens to the Atlantic at its eastern end; the barrier islands on the south side shelter the Great South Bay instead.

With 1,401 square miles of land, Long Island is the largest island in what?

The lower 48 US states have no bigger island; the ones that beat it, the Big Island of Hawaii and several in Alaska, belong to the other two states, and none carries eight million people.

The Indigenous name Paumanok is said to mean the place that does what?

Pays tribute is the usual gloss: Paumanok is read as 'land of tribute', recalling the wampum tribute its people paid to stronger neighbors; another old name, Sewanhacky, meant the place of shell beads.

Which Long Island town dates its founding to 21 October 1640?

Southold, on the North Fork, dates itself to 21 October 1640 and disputes with Southampton the title of New York's first English town; Hempstead followed in 1644, East Hampton in 1648 and Huntington in 1653.

What 1883 event first linked Long Island to the rest of the US without boats?

The Brooklyn Bridge opened on May 24, 1883, the first fixed link across the East River; the island has since gained nine bridges and more than a dozen rail and road tunnels to the rest of the city.

In 1910 a New York court decree pronounced which Long Island tribe extinct, despite members testifying in court?

The Montaukett were declared extinct in 1910 by Judge Abel Blackmar in Pharaoh v. Benson, a ruling that rejected their claim to ancestral land at Montauk; descendants have campaigned for state recognition ever since.

Which bay lies between Long Island's North and South Forks?

Peconic Bay fills the gap between the North and South Forks, fed by the Peconic River at its western end and opening east toward Gardiners Bay and Shelter Island.