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Eatons Neck

Shining a Light on a Perilous Sea

By Bill Bleyer | Staff Writer

The lighthouse, in about 1910, warns of the reef that claimed about 200 ships (Huntington Historical Society Photo)

Eatons Neck had the distinction of being one of six royal manors on Long Island during the colonial era, but it was to gain wider notoriety for the submerged rocks running a mile out from shore into Long Island Sound. The reef off Eatons Neck Point has been the most treacherous location for mariners on Long Island's North Shore: It's been the site of more than 200 wrecks.

In 1798, the owner of Eatons Neck, John Gardiner, already was maintaining an oil lamp on a pole to guide passing ships when the new federal government paid him $500 for 10 acres that it planned to use as the site of the Island's second lighthouse, after Montauk. The same year, John Sloss Hobart, former owner of Eatons Neck, became a U.S. senator and helped get a lighthouse bill passed and signed by President John Adams. The light was lit the following spring with Gardiner's 19-year-old son, John Jr., as the first keeper.

The lighthouse did not preclude further ship-wrecks, so in 1848 the Life Saving Benevolent Association of New York raised money for rescue stations on Long Island. The one on Eatons Neck was completed in March, 1849, and was manned by volunteers. Two shipwrecks on the same day in 1873 prompted a campaign for a full-time professional life-saving crew. Two years later, Congress set up the U.S. Life Saving Service, which established a station at Eatons Neck in 1876. With a reduction in shipping, the government closed the station in 1921, but with ships continuing to run aground it was reopened as a Coast Guard station in 1935.

Before there were shipwrecks or even ships, the area was controlled by the Matinecock Indians. In 1646, they sold the peninsula to Theophilus Eaton, governor of New Haven. The first settlers probably came from Connecticut about 1653, when the first deeds were recorded. The Manor of Eatons Neck had several owners, including Hobart, who inherited the peninsula in 1754 and was a Patriot leader during the Revolution and later a justice of the first Supreme Court of New York State. John Gardiner, a member of the family that still owns Gardiners Island, bought Eatons Neck in 1792 - the last time it was held by a single owner - and for a time Eatons Neck was called Gardiners Neck.

By the second half of the 19th Century, the peninsula had been carved into a half dozen estates. It also became home to an industry: sand minding, which moved into high gear in 1884 when Nicholas Godfrey leased West Beach from the Jones family and began mining the sand spit extending into Huntington Bay. Godfrey named the area Port Eaton and used machinery he had patented the year before - the first steam-driven digging machine in the United States. Later the Steers Sand and Gravel Co. leased the site and renamed it Sand City, a name that still applies, though mining ceased in 1964.

Eatons Neck became a tourist destination when Benjamin Mitchell opened a picnic area called Locust Grove in 1895. It had a dock to accommodate steamers from New York. Business thrived until June 14, 1904, when the General Slocum caught fire on its way to Locust Grove; 1,021 passengers and crew died and the publicity killed Locust Grove. Undeterred, Mitchell opened the even bigger Valley Grove nearby the next year and it lasted until 1919.

While most of Eatons Neck was estates, more modest development began at the turn of the century along the beach in what is now Asharoken. William Codling, a Northport lawyer and one of the largest landowners in the county, began to market a development he called Asharoken Beach. Codling lived in the model house, which was razed last year. By 1915, Asharoken Beach had developed into a summer resort for upper-class families. In 1925, the property owners established an incorporated village to increase control over beaches and roads.

One of the peninsula's more prominent residents was Henry Sturgis Morgan, founder of Morgan Stanley and grandson of J.P. Morgan. Between 1936 and 1939, Morgan purchased 448 acres to become the largest landowner on Eatons Neck. During World War II, the government used the estate to train Army Signal Corps troops. Several private owners now live there.

The two communities have had many prominent residents and guests. Theodore Roosevelt sailed to Eatons Neck for outings. Maj. Alexander deSeversky, founder of Seversky Aircraft, which later became Republic Aircraft and then Fairchild-Republic, moved to Asharoken Beach in the 1930s. In the same decade, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and playwright Eugene O'Neill rented houses, and O'Neill finished ``Mourning Becomes Electra'' there.

Antoine deSaint-Exupery, the French aviator and writer, spent half of 1942 on the peninsula, where he wrote and illustrated the classic children's book ``The Little Prince.'' Movie star Marlene Dietrich and Jackie Gleason were frequent visitors in the 1950s. Cartoonist and sculptor Rube Goldberg was an Asharoken resident and in 1953 designed what became the village seal with a portrait of the Chief Asharoken.

Where to Find More: ``Faded Laurels - The History of Eatons Neck and Asharoken'' by Edward A.T. Carr, Heart of the Lakes Publishing, 1994.