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Oak Beach and Gilgo Beach

Robert Moses' Outing a Beach Love Affair

Beginnings: Crusty old baymen still refer to the 18-mile barrier island that stretches from Jones Beach to Captree as ``the strand.'' And centuries before there was an Ocean Parkway, it was simply a collection of empty beaches and swampy marshland. In 1695, a Welsh privateer named Maj. Thomas Jones bought thousands of acres from the Indians and used the land as a whaling outpost. Long after Jones' death, people continued to call it Jones Beach. Besides a few hunting shacks, there were no dwellings on the main beach or adjacent islands until 1879, when Henry Livingston built a cottage on Oak Island. Before that, mainland farmers used to drop off cattle at the island to graze the pastures until they were picked up in late fall. But by the turn of the century, the Oak Island steamer was ferrying summer vacationers back and forth to cottages and boarding houses that sprang up at the bustling beach resort.

To Market, to Market: Even before the Revolutionary War, entrepreneurs harvested the salt hay, sedge and black grass along the island's shores to ship to New York City. The hay was valuable livestock bedding, and early settlers used it to thatch roofs, fill mattresses and mulch crops. While the rest of the country celebrated Labor Day, Long Islanders ushered in the Ma'shin' Seas'n (a contraction of Marshing Season), when crews of cutters staked their claims and spent days loading the Island's bounty onto hay boats. By 1764, Huntington Town officials, who then controlled the barrier island, tried to regulate salt-hay harvest by granting leases to cut hay. Although modified, those agreements still exist today, meaning all residents must lease their land from Babylon Town.

Turning Point: Robert Moses, a Connecticut native, became enchanted with the barrier beaches after friends invited him to Babylon in 1922. He rented a cottage in Oak Beach for many years, later moving to Gilgo. Besides turning half of ``the strand'' by the 1930s into a refuge known as Jones Beach State Park, Moses - and his parkways - opened up the summer-only communities of Oak Beach, Gilgo Beach, Captree and others to year-round residents.

Where to Find More: ``By-gone Days at Oak Beach'' by Ulla S. Kimball in Long Island Forum, October, 1968, and ``The Old Time Ma'shin' Season'' by Julian Denton Smith in Long Island Forum, July, 1956. Also see scrapbook and postcard collections kept by the Babylon Village Historical and Preservation Society.