Dead Horse Bay is a small body of water off Barren Island, between the Gerritsen Inlet and

Rockaway Inlet Rockaway Inlet is a strait connecting Jamaica Bay, wholly within New York City, with the Atlantic Ocean. It separates the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens from the Floyd Bennett Field (formerly Barren Island) in Brooklyn. Rockaway Inlet is bounded ...

in the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

borough A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely. History In the Middle Ag ...

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

History

From the nineteenth century to the twentieth century, the area has been used in a variety of ways, including manufacturing fertilizer from the remains of dead animals, producing

fish oil Fish oil is oil derived from the tissues of oily fish. Fish oils contain the omega-3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), precursors of certain eicosanoids that are known to reduce inflammation in the body a ...

from the

menhaden Menhaden, also known as mossbunker and bunker and "the most important fish in the sea", are forage fish of the genera ''Brevoortia'' and ''Ethmidium'', two genera of marine fish in the family Clupeidae. ''Menhaden'' is a blend of ''poghaden'' ...

caught in the bay, and more recently a landfill for the disposal of New York City’s garbage. Periodic clogging by carcasses from the adjacent glue factory with 200 foot chimney gave the bay its name. A millstone used to grind

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million y ...

bones can still be found along the Millstone trail. In 1926, much of the salt marsh surrounding Dead Horse Bay and the rest of Barren Island were pumped with sand from

Jamaica Bay Jamaica Bay is an estuary on the southern portion of the western tip of Long Island, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. The estuary is partially man-made, and partially natural. The bay connects with Lower New York Bay to the west, ...

. This raised the land to 16 feet above the high tide mark and connected the islands to each other, and the mainland of Brooklyn, in order to create

Floyd Bennett Field Floyd Bennett Field is an airfield in the Marine Park neighborhood of southeast Brooklyn in New York City, along the shore of Jamaica Bay. The airport originally hosted commercial and general aviation traffic before being used as a naval air ...

as New York City's first municipal airport. The entire area, including the historic airfield, is now managed by the

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propertie ...

as part of the Jamaica Bay Unit of the

Gateway National Recreation Area Gateway National Recreation Area is a U.S. National Recreation Area in New York City and Monmouth County, New Jersey. It provides recreational opportunities that are not commonly found in a dense urban environment, including ocean swimming, bi ...

In the 1950s, urban planner

Robert Moses Robert Moses (December 18, 1888 – July 29, 1981) was an American urban planner and public official who worked in the New York metropolitan area during the early to mid 20th century. Despite never being elected to any office, Moses is regarded ...

attempted to expand the now-peninsula to the west using garbage covered by topsoil, but the layer of soil eroded, and garbage can be seen on the coast during low tide. This coast contains many exposed broken glass bottles and other

non-biodegradable Biodegradable waste includes any organic matter in waste which can be broken down into carbon dioxide, water, methane or simple organic molecules by micro-organisms and other living things by composting, aerobic digestion, anaerobic digestion ...

material. In August 2020, the

announced that Dead Horse Bay would be closed indefinitely because of the presence of radiological contamination. The NPS said at the time that the cleanup could last several years. The contamination was identified as having come from two deck markers, a type of Radium-226 or Strontium-90 based radioluminescent device used by the US military, though the risk of radiological exposure was considered low.

Current use

School groups are taken to Dead Horse Bay on a regular basis to walk the Millstone trail, :wiktionary:seine, seine for a variety of fishes, and learn about the natural and cultural history of the area. Its shores are also a popular sport fishing spot, and home to a marina operating in Deep Creek as a National Park Service concession (contract), concession. Today one can find a large array of glass bottles and pieces of broken glass on the beach, along with old shoes and construction materials, many from the landfill which is now leaking. It is a popular place for artists and crafters to collect strange decorative materials.

References

External links

* Photos. * Video on the history of Dead Horse Bay * {{Coord, 40, 35, 0.6, N, 73, 54, 14.7, W, display=title Bays of New York (state) Bays of Kings County, New York Gateway National Recreation Area

History

Current use

References

Further reading

External links