Barren Island, Brooklyn

Barren Island is a peninsula and former island on the southeast shore of Brooklyn in New York City. Located on Jamaica Bay, it was geographically part of the Outer Barrier island group on the South Shore of Long Island. The island was occupied by the Lenape Native Americans prior to the arrival of Dutch settlers in the 17th century. It was developed as an industrial complex with fish rendering plants and other industries.

About Barren Island, Brooklyn in brief

Barren Island is a peninsula and former island on the southeast shore of Brooklyn in New York City. Located on Jamaica Bay, it was geographically part of the Outer Barrier island group on the South Shore of Long Island. The island was occupied by the Lenape Native Americans prior to the arrival of Dutch settlers in the 17th century. From the 1850s to the mid-1930s, the island was developed as an industrial complex with fish rendering plants and other industries. By the 1920s, most of the industrial activity had tapered off, and landfill was used to unite the island with the rest of Brooklyn. No trace remains of the former island’s industrial use. Since 1972, the site has beenpart of the Gateway National Recreation Area, managed by the National Park Service. In the late 20th century, a small patch of dunes on the western side of the island, containing dunes, wetlands, and woods, was largely untouched. In addition, the northern and western coasts had become heavily polluted, covering the entire island with water. The former island, along with the adjacent Mill Basin, is now part of New York Harbor Island, which is part of Staten Island and the city’s East River Waterfront Park. The name is a corruption of Beeren Eylandt, the Dutch-language term for “Bears’ Island”. It was originally part of an estuary at the mouth of Jamaica Bay and acted as a barrier island for the larger Long Island, located to Barren Island’s north.

The bay, in turn, was created during the end of the Wisconsin glaciation. The water from the melting glacier ran downhill toward a low-lying delta that adjoined the Atlantic Ocean, which later became Jamaica Bay. A body of water called Rockaway Inlet, located south of the isle, connected the bay with the ocean. By 1839, Barren island, Plumb Beach, and Pelican Beach were a single island, separated from Coney Island to the west by Plumb beach Inlet. The neighboring island of Rockaway Beach was extended more than one mile to the southwest due to the construction of several jetties to protect manmade developments there. As a result of the extension of the Rockaway extension, the former barrier island and its beach was washed away in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The southern coast contained a tidal creek stretching into the center of the southern coast. Tidal creeks also stretched across the island’s marshes, although one of these was bisected by theConstruction of Floyd Bennett Field bisected the entirety of the peninsula in 1925, which was used as a military airfield. The entire island, except for the northern coast, was heavily polluted by the 1,000-foot-wide Mill Basin creek, where the tidal wetlands were abutted by the man-made Mill Basin. Originally, Rockaway was located toBarren’s east, and the two islands’ southern tips were aligned.

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