The 1970s: Days of soul searching

When the housing boom ended, thousands of jobs ended with it. Long Islanders were infuriated by rising energy rates and rising taxes. For the first time, people began leaving the region to seek the good life somewhere else.

In 1972, the LIE was completed, 11 years behind schedule and $80 million over budget estimates.

Watergate and the fall of Richard Nixon hit home here, where Nixon had enjoyed some of his largest pluralities in the nation. It led to historic Democratic gains in local elections that generally saw Republican victories, as well as ethics reforms.

Yet scandals still abounded. Newsday reported in 1972 that the Nassau Republican Party was forcing town and county workers to kick back 1 percent of their salaries to the party. The Southwest Sewer District was found to be awash in corruption, with a raft of politicos and contractors accused of bribery and huge cost overruns. And in 1976, Nassau District Attorney William Cahn was convicted of 45 counts of mail fraud and making false statements for double billing travel expenses.

In what came to be known as the Levittown Case, a State Supreme Court judge deemed New York's school-aid formula unconstitutional, as it favored students in districts with a larger tax base. Meanwhile, an appeals court in 1979 upheld the Island Trees School Board's 1976 banning of 11 books, including works by Kurt Vonnegut and Langston Hughes.

LILCO spent $2.2 billion on a nuclear plant at Shoreham, where safety concerns inspired the largest protest Long Island had ever seen. Elsewhere, the costs of pollution became palpable, though the dawning of environmentalism also inspired efforts to clean up some of the Island's harbors and bays.

The Vietnam War ended. Sit-ins and protests gave way to roller-discos and Little League. Yet Long Islanders grappled with what seemed like the end of its easy prosperity, and that period of soul searching was far from over.

-- Melanie Lefkowitz