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

Gerritsen Inlet Gerritsen Creek is a short watercourse in Brooklyn, New York City, that empties into Jamaica Bay. The creek has been described as one of the "fingers" that formed the original shoreline of Jamaica Bay. The creek lies just beyond the maximum exten ...

and Rockaway Inlet 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 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 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. Glass bottle beach 17 May 2020

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 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 Radium is a chemical element with the symbol Ra and atomic number 88. It is the sixth element in group 2 of the periodic table, also known as the alkaline earth metals. Pure radium is silvery-white, but it readily reacts with nitrogen (rather t ...

-226 or

Strontium Strontium is the chemical element with the symbol Sr and atomic number 38. An alkaline earth metal, strontium is a soft silver-white yellowish metallic element that is highly chemically reactive. The metal forms a dark oxide layer when it is ex ...

-90 based

radioluminescent Radioluminescence is the phenomenon by which light is produced in a material by bombardment with ionizing radiation such as alpha particles, beta particles, or gamma rays. Radioluminescence is used as a low level light source for night illumina ...

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,

seine ) , mouth_location = Le Havre/Honfleur , mouth_coordinates = , mouth_elevation = , progression = , river_system = Seine basin , basin_size = , tributaries_left = Yonne, Loing, Eure, Risle , tributarie ...

for a variety of fishes, and learn about the natural and cultural history of the area. Its shores are also a popular

sport fishing Recreational fishing, also called sport fishing or game fishing, is fishing for leisure, exercise or competition. It can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is professional fishing for profit; or subsistence fishing, which is fishing ...

spot, and home to a

marina A marina (from Spanish , Portuguese and Italian : ''marina'', "coast" or "shore") is a dock or basin with moorings and supplies for yachts and small boats. A marina differs from a port in that a marina does not handle large passenger ships o ...

operating in Deep Creek as a National Park Service

concession Concession may refer to: General * Concession (contract) (sometimes called a concession agreement), a contractual right to carry on a certain kind of business or activity in an area, such as to explore or develop its natural resources or to opera ...

. 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