A GREAT WATER PARK IN JAMAICA BAY, 



NEW YORK 



By HAROLD A. CAPARN 



(Meetine of November 12, 1907) 



A CIRCLE of eight miles radius, whose center is City Hall, New York, would pass 

 through Bergen Beach and Canarsie Landing, both popular pleasure resorts on 

 the shores of Jamaica Bay on Long Island. A ten-mile radius would pass close to 

 Barren Island where the city garbage is disposed of. Jamaica Bay runs east of these places. 

 In shape it is an ellipse with a major axis of ten miles and a minor axis of five miles, with 

 the major axis running about east and west. On three sides, north, east, and west, it is 

 surrounded by salt marshes, partly overflowed at high tide. The southern boundary is 

 mainly a sand-bar, called Rockaway Beach, which separates the bay from the Atlantic 

 Ocean. Water from the ocean enters and leaves it through a channel called Rockaway 

 Inlet. The bay is an assemblage of channels meandering between numerous marshy islands, 

 hummocks, or hassocks as they are called, largely submerged at high tide. Around the 

 group of islands runs a wide channel called, according to locality. Big Channel, Grassy 

 Bay, Grass Hassock Channel, and Beach Channel. Three other main channels. Broad 

 and Pumpkinpatch Channels and The Raunt intersect the islands, and besides these there 

 are many smaller channels and creeks. Some of the names, like those mentioned, are worth 

 preserving for their picturesqueness and local color. Such are Carnarsie Pol, Jo Co's Marsh, 

 Nestepol Marsh, Ruffle Bar, Ruler's Point Hassock. The whole water area of the bay is 

 16,170 acres, or 25^ square miles. The marsh area surrounding it is 8,500 acres, and in 

 the bay are 4,200 acres of marsh. With so great an extent of surface at or near water-level 

 it will be plain that the general character is one of low skyline and great expanse, with 

 the monotony always produced by the absence of any definite boundaries of the middle 

 distance. 



Since taking up the subject of a park in Jamaica Bay, which had been proposed several 

 years ago in a general way by the City Improvement Commission, amongst others I have 

 learned that a Commission of Engineers has been appointed by Mayor McCIellan to report 

 on Jamaica Bay as a site for a harbor for ocean-going vessels with docks and wharfage. 

 The Commission issued their report on May 31, 1907. Its members were not able to agree 

 on a general scheme and issued a majority and a minority report, both very interesting 

 and showing much care and research. It will be worth while to outline them briefly, and 

 they will be comprehensible by the aid of the maps contained in the report. 



New York is outgrowing its harbor and dock facilities and is feeling pressing need for 

 their extension. There are four hundred and four miles of water-front and about thirty- 

 five miles of dock and wharf-front in the city. Population and exports and imports double 

 in New York about every thirty years. For instance, the imports and exports entered 

 and cleared at the port of New York increased from $619,570,1 18 in 1875 to $1,204,355,361 

 in 1905. Tonnage in foreign trade was 8,732,507 tons in 1875; 18,942,380 in 1905. This 

 looks as if the city ought to have twice as much dock- and wharf-room in 1940 as she 

 has now. 



To provide for this the Commission has advised the dredging of Jamaica Bay 



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