Jones Beach State Park (colloquially, "Jones Beach") is a state park of the U.S. state of New York. It is located in southern Nassau County, in the hamlet of Wantagh, on Jones Beach Island, a barrier island linked to Long Island by the Meadowbrook State Parkway, Wantagh State Parkway, and Ocean Parkway.
The park - 10 mi (16.1 km) in length - is renowned for its great beaches (which, excepting the Zachs Bay, face the open Atlantic Ocean) and furnishes one of the most popular summer recreational locations for the New York metropolitan area. It is the most popular and heavily visited beach on the East Coast, with an estimated six million visitors per year.
Nikon at Jones Beach Theater, an outdoor arena in the park, is a popular musical and concert venue. The park also has a 2 mi (3.2 km) long boardwalk. It once featured dining and catering facilities that were popular sites for private parties and weddings; these have been shut down.
Development by Robert Moses
The park was created during Robert Moses' administration as President of the Long Island State Park Commission (for which he wrote the legislation in 1923) as part of the development of parkways on Long Island. Moses' first major public project, Jones Beach State Park, is considered to be one of the most beautiful parks in the world, free from housing developers and private clubs, and instead is open for the general public. Several homes on High Hill Beach were barged further down the island to West Gilgo Beach to make room for the park.
When Moses' group first surveyed Jones Island, it was swampy and only two feet above sea level; the island frequently became completely submerged during storms. To create the park, huge dredgers worked day and up to midnight to bring sand from the bay bottom, eventually bringing the island to twelve feet above sea level. Another problem that followed was the wind--the fine silver beach sand would blow horribly, making the workers miserable and making the use of the beach as a recreational facility unlikely. Moses sent landscape architects to other stable Long Island beaches, who reported that a beach grass (Ammophilia arenaria), whose roots grew sideways in search of water, held dunes in place, forming a barrier to the wind. In the summer of 1928, thousands of men worked on the beach planting the grass by hand.
Built in the 1920s, many of its buildings and facilities feature Art Deco architecture. In the center of a traffic circle that he planned as a terminus for the Wantagh State Parkway, Moses ordered the construction of an Italianate-style water tower to serve as a central feature of the park.
The park opened to the public on August 4, 1929, along with the causeway that provided automobile access from the mainland of Long Island. The causeway was the first section in what was to become the Wantagh State Parkway. Unusually for the time, no carnival type amusements were allowed in the park area.
Indian Village at Jones Beach
In 1930, the planner Robert Moses hired Rosebud Yellow Robe as Director of the Indian Village at Jones Beach State Park. Rosebud became a public celebrity to thousands of children who visited the Indian Village at Jones Beach every summer from 1930 to 1950. The Indian Village at Jones Beach was created as a Plains Indian village for children with three large tipis. The large Council Tipi contained museum cases with artifacts borrowed from the American Museum of Natural History. The other tipis served as club houses for the children. Rosebud told stories and folklore of the Lakota and local Eastern Woodlands tribes. Rosebud worked as Director of the Indian Village from 1930 to 1950, and taught tens of thousands of school children and several generations of New Yorkers about Native American history and culture. Rosebud recalled, "When I first lectured to public school classes in New York, many of the smaller children hid under their desks, for they knew from the movies what a blood-thirsty scalping Indian might do to them." Yellow Robe dressed in a 19th-century Lakota Indian costume: a deerskin dress, leggings, and moccasins, with a feathered warbonnet, not customarily worn by women. Children listened to stories and legends Rosebud and her sisters heard from her father, teaching them about Native American culture through handicraft, games and songs. Each year ended with the Annual American Indian Art Exhibit where the projects the children had been working on were showcased and judged. Winners were awarded with authentic Indian artifacts which were then displayed in participating local schools. During the winter season, dressed in tribal costume, Yellow Robe visited schools and public libraries to tell Lakota stories and legends. In the summer of 1932, Rosebud staged a ceremony characterized as a "Peace Council Fire" that attracted a crowd estimated at one thousand people including three hundred children. From the late 1930s through the 1950s, Yellow Robe was a broadcast celebrity with the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City and appeared as a regular on NBC children's programs. In later years, Rosebud continued her storytelling and lectures at the American Museum of Natural History and the Donnell Library of New York. In 1994, Yellow Robe's career as an educator was honored in a performance of "Rosebud's Song" by the National Dance Institute at New York City's Madison Square Garden.
Ocean and bay beachfronts
Bathers at Jones Beach State Park can choose from 6.5 miles of ocean beach frontage and a half mile of bay frontage (on Zachs Bay), which was developed for still water bathing.
Buildings
The primary buildings on the Jones Beach site are the two enormous bathhouses (west and east) and the 231-foot (70 m) water tower, all built to Moses' specifications. After rejecting a number of submissions by architects for the bathhouses, he selected the designs of the young and relatively inexperienced Herbert Magoon. Moses also picked out building materials - Ohio Sandstone and Barbizon brick - two of the most expensive materials available. Another prominent structure is the Jones Beach Marine Theater, today known as the Nikon at Jones Beach Theater.
Transportation
Jones Beach is accessible by car, boat, bicycle, and in the summer season by bus. Most visitors arrive by car via the Meadowbrook State Parkway or the Wantagh State Parkway; the recreation area is also accessible via the Ocean Parkway. A significant portion of visitors take the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) to Freeport and then a bus to Jones Beach. Boaters often anchor on the bay side of Jones Beach (i.e., Zachs Bay), especially at night during a show such as the fireworks show on July 4.
A greenway alongside the Wantagh State Parkway allows bicycling, skating or walking about 4 miles (6.4 km) from Cedar Creek County Park on Merrick Road into the State Park. A similar route to Long Beach is under consideration.
As of 2013, parking costs $10.00, though a New York State Empire Passport ($65) can be used to park for free. The parking fees are charged from 6 am - 6 pm Sat-Sun-Hol, 8 am - 4 pm weekdays from Memorial Day through Columbus day. The six main public parking areas along the boardwalk can handle 14,302 vehicles. The center parking fields are the busiest on summer weekends. Bicycle parking is free, but bike riding within the park is not allowed during the summer and bikes must be locked at the racks at the end of the Wantagh Parkway bike path.
Amenities
Jones Beach State Park offers numerous amenities, many of which meet the Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility standards. Examples include:
Facilities
Bandshell
The Jones Beach Boardwalk bandshell, located near Parking Field 4, offers live performances and free music.
Parking fields
Jones Beach's West End originally featured two parking fields known as West End 1, which was closed permanently in 1992 and replaced by the Theodore Roosevelt nature preserve after lying abandoned for nearly a decade, and West End 2, which lies at the westernmost area of the state park adjacent to the jetty on Jones' Inlet. West End 2 is currently a designated surfing area, which is open to stargazers and fisherman at night and bird watchers and other naturalists by day. The West End 2 beach has been closed since April 2009 because of the state fiscal crisis and will remain closed through 2010. The West End 2 beach house is partially open as bathrooms and showers are regularly maintained, but concessions are closed. The West End 2 parking field along with the Field 1 are the two largest ocean front parking areas currently extant in the park.
Restaurants and concessions
There are multiple concession stands along the boardwalk in season. A few of the larger concessions stay open past the main summer season. Beach dining and catering facilities no longer exist at Jones Beach.
The Boardwalk Cafe was a large restaurant with an expansive ocean view, built in 1966. It was demolished in 2004 due to erosion from the natural elements, and will be replaced. A replacement $40 million, 1,500-seat, 70,000-square-foot (6,500 m2) restaurant/catering hall called Trump on the Ocean to be operated by real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump and catering impresario Steven Carl has been tied up in fights with state to get a permit.
Due to Hurricane Sandy this project has been canceled. Its plans include a 26,710-square-foot (2,481 m2) basement which the state says is illegal in a flood plain.
The West Bath House is home to a Friendly's ice cream parlor on the upper level; the patio outside overlooks both the pool and the ocean.
Sports
A par 3 Pitch and Putt Course, advertised as "play[ing] differently each day, depending upon the prevailing winds", is located adjacent to the boardwalk and Atlantic Ocean. Basketball, paddle tennis, and shuffleboard facilities are also available.
Swimming pools
There are two swimming pools available for public use at Jones Beach; the West Bath House pool is traditionally open all week long, while the East Bath House pool is weekends-only. Due to budget constraints, the East Bath House was closed during the 2009 season.
Theodore Roosevelt Nature Center
The Theodore Roosevelt Nature Center includes an exhibit area, which depicts a variety of marine habitats (including the South Shore Estuary Reserve, the seashore and the dune environment), and child-centered activities, which allow indoor visitors to feel live marine animals, look through a microscope, or play in a children's activity area, and outdoor visitors to dig up whale bones in the Discovery Bone Cove, walk through a butterfly garden, view a shipwreck, or walk along an environmental boardwalk that leads to the dune environment to view the plants and animals that live there. The Center also offers interpretive programs for organized groups and the general public.
Entertainment
A half a mile north of the beach, overlooking Zachs Bay, is the 15,200-seat Nikon at Jones Beach Theater. This outdoor amphitheatre opened in 1952 and hosts numerous world famous musicians during the summer months. It is directly across the street from the ocean and is outdoors in an open natural environment.
Since 2004, Jones Beach has hosted the Bethpage Air Show during the last weekend of May (Memorial Day weekend). The air show is one of the largest in the United States, hosting 403,000 people over two days during the 2006 show.
References
External links
- Official Jones Beach State Park website
- JonesBeach.com - Concert Listings
- Jones Beach Club - organization dedicated to the park's preservation and enjoyment.
- Long Island Traditions: Eastern Nassau: Jones Beach
Interesting Informations
Looking products related to this topic, find out at Amazon.com
Source of the article : here
EmoticonEmoticon