A big contributor to the preservation of open space on eastern Long Island during the critical early boom years of luxury development—1967 to 1999—was the Suffolk County, N.Y., parks department. It was no coincidence that this happened then: the parks authority had only recently been created. It is a reflection of the era that was ending in the mid-1960s that Suffolk was without a parks agency. So much of the vast non-village stretches of the East End were just wooded acreage or bayfront–there for the using–that formal recreation planning was an afterthought.
This transitional period concluded with creation of the Community Preservation Fund in 1999, from a property-transaction tax that allowed East End localities to buy public space routinely. Before that, special initiatives or land donations were required except where New York State had corralled park space under master planner Robert Moses. The localities had looked after their fisheries and waterfowl areas, and by the 1970s Suffolk County took an active role in farmland preservation, but through mid-century the backwoods were an organized retreat primarily for hunting groups and scouting organizations (see below). It took a changed emphasis to reset the area’s future.
Today, nearly 60 years after Suffolk County opened its parks department, it has some 50,000 acres of recreational open-space under its management alone. (Thousands more acres on the East End are held by other public agencies and nonprofits.) Suffolk’s government may have more such land in its hands than any county in the U.S.
Suffolk Parks kicked into gear after the passage of a New York state parks bond issue in 1960, which led to funding at the county level for several big “active” parks (campgrounds and other hardscape). These were around significant water bodies in the rapidly populating western half of the county as well as three in the eastern—Sears-Bellows in Hampton Bays, Indian Island in Riverhead and Cedar Point in East Hampton town. (The state, decades before, had created that type of park at Hither Hills near Montauk, and at Wildwood, in Wading River.)
Significantly, that was a model not to be followed in most later county parks on the island’s South Fork. Rather, as development there accelerated into the 1970s and particularly the 1980s, a different approach to parkland took hold, featuring parcel preservation with only light or passive usage. This typically means minimal parking lots and garbage collection, and often no lighting or plumbing. Such “carry in, carry out” recreation offered better protection for surface and ground waters, which were seen to be threatened by the surrounding construction activity.
An early major example was Montauk County Park, on the former Indian Field near Big Reed Pond and Gin (bay) Beach. Led by deputy parks commissioner Edward V. Ecker (a past East Hampton supervisor), Suffolk County moved to create the big reserve in 1971. First it had to resolve ambitions in some quarters for an expansion of the adjoining Montauk Airport operation—ultimately it was kept as a mostly quiet strip. (The park later went through a period renamed for Theodore Roosevelt, whose Rough Riders had convalesced at the site in 1898, but under community pressure had the Montauk moniker restored.)
Numerous county, state and town preservations in the succeeding three decades hewed to this natural approach. A variation occurred at Shinnecock East County Park, at the tip of what is now called Meadow Lane as it reaches the Shinnecock Inlet in Southampton. There, according to retired Suffolk Parks official Bill Sickles, an informal and increasingly chaotic camping tradition on what was a public-works area for “inlet stabilization” was transformed by the county into a popular RV-only paved lot that doesn’t include public restrooms or other shared facilities.
The result from that ‘60s-onward push is a county that, for all the frequent contemporary complaints about traffic, McMansions and lost rusticity, is laced with green on any map. Especially is this true in its eastern half. Had actions not been taken when they were, the East End would be a less desirable—and, yes, cheaper—place to live.
As an aside, another distinguishing characteristic of Suffolk County parks is that until lately they have rarely been named after public officials, even those who were involved in creating them. (The current county executive is cited on the sign boards at park entrances.) There were a few exceptions: the Lee Koppelman preserve at Montauk’s Hither Woods (he was a county planning chief who was involved in negotiations to acquire the property from a developer); a nearby bay-beach spot named for the aforementioned Edward Ecker; and the Stephen Meschutt Beach Park where the Shinnecock Canal empties into Peconic Bay (he was a Southampton town supervisor). But two of Suffolk County’s most avid champions of parks and open space during the critical years described here, county executives John V.N. Klein and Peter Cohalan (who ousted Klein, on an unrelated issue), are not commemorated in this way. Their roles, like many of the legacy preserves they championed, remain understated. –7/24/23
The Scouts as Preservation Pioneers
Prior to the formation of local public parks departments, scouting organizations established prime campgrounds on the East End. Probably the most notable was the Suffolk Boy Scouts parcel at Baiting Hollow, in western Riverhead town. That facility waxed and waned over the 20th century, but is still in active use. (A nearby retreat for the Nassau County scouts, the John Schiff reservation—nee Camp Wauwepex—was established about the same time, in the 1920s, but has been shrunken and less utilized since the 1970s.) In 1959 the Suffolk scouts acquired another grounds, Camp Wilderness in Yaphank, until finances demanded a sale in 1972 to the county, which opened Suffolk’s Cathedral Pines Park on the site. The Girl Scouts of Nassau, meanwhile, maintained Camp Tekawitha in upper Hampton Bays from 1939 until it fell into disuse and was bought by the town of Southampton in 2006 for what is now Squiretown Park. Earlier, the girl-scout Camp Barstow at Miller Place was obtained by the county for what is now Cordwood Landing Park. But Camp Blue Bay on Gardiners Bay in East Hampton, opened in 1946, remains busy with girl campers. –Thanks to Mayra Scanlon of Southampton’s Rogers Library for research assistance
Tim W. Ferguson 