Okay Long Island and Hawaii, well they are both Islands! They also both have surfing, although Hawaii has much better surf, but here is some great video clips of Long Island surfing, followed by some comparisons to Hawaii surfing, you will notice that the surf is from pre hurricane waves, that is on Long Island before a large storm or a huricane hits the waves are always much better, so that is prime surf time.
Hawaii Surf
This one is a 65 foot wave at Jaws surfed by Mike Parsons, makes the Long Island surfing look like it is done in a bathtub.
Okay surfing aside Long Island and Hawii are opposite in regards to land ownership and urbanizaiton. With Hawaii being mostly large plots of land and relativly few landowners, Long Island is made up of smaller plots of land and has millions of landowners. Long Island is very urban compared to Hawaii which is mostly rural.
Now another thing that the two places have in common are birds, and much like Hawaii, Long Island is home to some nearly extinct birds that need preservation. The Piping Plover is in danger with only 309 pairs of these birds on the Atlantic Coast, a major breeding area is Long Island. Just like with Hawaii human encroachment and all that goes with it caused a third of thier birds to go extinct, Long Island has the same problem, but to a lesser degree. Also plants like the Sanplain gerardia are endangered and might go extinct due to human encroachment and development. (http://www.fws.gov/northeast/nyfo/es/lirecovery.htm)
Now on a lighter note, I feel strongly that any talk about Hawaii would not be complete without the following tribute to Jack Lord and Tom Selleck:
All kidding aside, the introductions to each of these classic television shows highlight many features that Hawaii has to offer, take a closer look at the views from the helicopter in the Magnum video, and the tourist industry and urbanization is very apparent from Hawaii 5-O.
The The North Pacific Coast and Long Island have almost opposite physical features. With Long Island being very flat, the highest elevation being Jaynes Hill according to the NED, National Elevation Dataset, being 387 feet. Walt Whitman was born near this hill, and there is a plaque at the summit with some of his writing:
The contrast to the The North Pacific Coast with its vast mountain ranges, containing the highest elevation point in North America Mt. McKinley, Alaska at 20,327 feet is 19,940 feet higher than Long Islands highest point. Roughly 3.75 miles higher! Here is a video clip of Rex Pemberton reaching the summit of Mt. McKinley:
(mostly just because the view is awesome)
The North Pacific Coast is also the only place other than Hawaii that has active volcanic activity in the United States. There is no volcanic activity on Long Island at all. Here are some clips from Mt St. Helens eruption in 1980, located in the southern part of the Cascades.
This clip gives some great scenic information on the Cascades, as well as great information on Mt. St. Helens, it is a bit long but a great watch.
Now there are some similiar economic activities that occur in both The North Pacific Coast, and Long Island and one of the most obvious is probably fishing and related industries. The North Pacific Coast has Shellfish farms and so does Long Island, as well as fishing off the coastal waters. Here is a bit about some of the fare available on Long Island, as well as a quick comparison between East and West coast, although not totally specific to the North Pacific Coast and Long Island it is worth a watch.
What does the Long Island Vicinity and California have in common? Toursim, industry, fishing and gaming, farming, being a part of an incredibly urban and megalopolis environment, traffic problems and ubran sprawl and believe it or not FAULT LINES! California of course everyone knows is earthquake central in the United States, the dreaded San Andreas Fault line is something most Americans have knowledge of. What many people do not know is that there is a big fault line very close to Long Island called the Ramapo Fault System, that occasionally shakes up the Long Island area with small quakes, now it is not on Long Island but close enough that the quakes are felt quite well on the Island.
There is another fault like off the coast of Long Island under the Atlantic Ocean, the East Coast Boundary Fault, but it is mostly stable. Much of the big geologic activity in the fault lines along this Long Island area were 200 million years ago or more. This link is to a great article that has lots of information about the geologic makeup of the area, it is made available by the New York State Museum.
Luckily unlike California there is no direct fault line under Long Island, although I wonder if there were and the Island sunk into the sea as a result of a big quake, would Long Island be the new Atlantis? Just silly food for thought.
The Southwest Border Area and Long Island have one thing in common, native americans. The southwest border area has some of the most well known tribes in the United States, the Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo, roamed this area long before the Spanish arrived exploring the deserts and canyons of this land. Much like the 13 tribes controlled all of Long Island before the Dutch and English settlers arrived and pushed them out and eventually onto reservations. Unlike the small reservations on Long Island, the Southwest Border Area has some of the largest reservations with very large populations that exist in the United States.
The conditions of the reservations in the Southwest Border Area and on Long Island are different. The reservations on Long Island are in relative poverty compared to the surrounding suburbs, but not extreme poverty that exists on the reservations of the Southwest. Examples of the differences are the tourism that the Long Island Indians have, that generates revenue, like the Shinnecock Indians and thier Annual labor day festival.
In comparison this is a great 7 part series about the Navajo Reservation and the people.
Now you can only learn so much by watching video clips of Indian Reservations. Growing up on Long Island I had the opportunity to visit the reservations often and learn about the culture and see the conditions that the people were living in. I have also been to the Navajo and Hopi reservations among others and seen the conditions first hand, and I can tell you it is a night and day differences. One of the biggest problems that causes this differnce is the lack of economic oppotunity for the Reservations of the Southwest. Unlike Long Island where the reservations are smack in the middle of a vibrant diverse economy with jobs and opportunities that are outside the reservations, many of the Native Americans in the Southwest Border area are on reservations that are proverbally in the middle of nowhere with little economic engines located nearby, and they have land that is arid, and not as useful as the reservations on Long Island. Farming is possible on Long Island, but in the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona this opportunity is not easily available. Perhaps the biggest difference is due to the fact that the Native Americans live on State Reservations not Federal Reservations like the Native Americans in the Southwest Border Area.
Just like Long Island originally belonged to the Dutch before it became part of the British Empire and a colony so too the Southwest Border Area was under the dominion of the Spanish Empire before becoming part of the United States.
The Empty Interior and Long Island have almost opposite physical features. With Long Island being very flat, the highest elevation being Jaynes Hill according to the NED, National Elevation Dataset, being 387 feet. In contrast to the Empty Interior with the massive Rocky Mountains, which dwarf the elevations on the east coast of the United States and Long Island. Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado is a great place to see parts of the Rockies.
Here is a great flight clip of the central rockies, if you compare it to the flight clips I have posted in an earlier Long Island post, the differences are astounding.
Other than the massive mountain ranges that contrast Long Island, there are a few things in common with The Empty Interior and Long Island. Tourism as a source of income being one of the biggest. The many national parks spread throughout the Empty Interior, as well as Ski areas, and fishing spots bring quite a bit of money into an otherwise lessened economic zone, not to mention Las Vegas! Well Long Island has The Hamptons, Fire Island and many small villages steeped in local and regional history going back to the 17th century.
The Empty Interior can offer a variety of tourist attractions:
Here is just a little taste of what Long Island can offer tourists:
The Empty Interior was mostly populated by peoples of northern european decent, and many of the people of Long Island also share this common ancestry.
Although similar in landscape that both areas have large flat expanses. Also believe it or not a very common sight is seen often in both areas. Cyclic funnels of air, known as Tornados in the Great Plains, Long Island has tons of Waterspouts, I guess it is only a tornado when it is over land. I have seen tons of these in the waters growing up on Long Island, and it is a very cool thing, it rains down seaweed and fish over the land nearby which is freaky. Here are some videos of waterspouts in the Long Island waters.
Another big thing in common between Long Island and the Great Plains and Prairies is the fact that they both have huge aquifers. The Ogalala aquifer irrigates so much of the land in the Great Plains. On Long Island there are 3 major aquifers, the Upper Glacial Aquifer, The Lloyd Aquifer and the Magothy Aquifer. Unlike the Ogalala which is "fossil" water a million years old, the aquifers of Long Island are only in the thousands of years old. The Department of Environmental Conservation of New York has some great information on these aquifers: http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/36183.html.
Much like the interior plains of the Agricultural Core of America, Long Island has farming. There is a long history of farming, relegated however to the eastern portion of the Island due to urban expansion, in days past most of Long Island was used for farming. It is a three century old tradition on the Island and of vital economic importance to the area. Here is a great hour long program on farming on Long Island, link only, embedding is not possible.
Of course over the course of time farming has changed. Some of the many crops grown on Long Island include, Corn (personnaly Long Island sweet summer corn rocks any other corn ever), flowers, vegetables like squash, bell peppers, tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, zucchini, potatoes, cabbage, cranberries, many vinyards dot the eastern portion of Long Island. Unlike the core the crop variety is in greater abundance and in recent years many farms have chosen to specialize into niche markets to survive. Many directly supply restaurants and businesses on Long Island and in NYC.
My own family history is steeped in farming tradtions on Long Island, my grandmother and her family were farmers in the town I grew up in. On one of the prominent corners in town was Joseph Arata's produce market, the family lived upstairs and the downstairs was where they sold all the vegetables and dairy from the farms back in 1912, of course now it is retail storespace.
Unlike the core however most Long Island farms are like New England farms, and small and family run. Not as expansive as farms of the core, but still having impressive crop yields. A clip from the America's Heartland Series talks about farming on Long Island, and if you didn't catch it the oldest farm in New York state is featured, going on the 12th generation of the family running it dating back to 1661. Back when the current agricultural core was nothing but French fur trappers and Native Americans.
As you can see there is a long tradition of farming on the Island, and it has been able to adapt and stay alive, although shrinking, despite the urban encroachment of the suburban population.
Long Island has a few things in common with the first one being Hurricanes. Long Island is in the Hurricane Hazard Zone as shown by the National Hurricane Center:
Most people do not relate Long Island to hurricanes but they do follow the coast northward and Long Island has been hit in the past by these monster weather formations. In 1985 Gloria hit Long Island, if you are not from the area you probably didn't think much about it at all. I was there at the time and remember it all too well. I lived on Southern Long Island along the coast, not right on the water but less than a 1/2 mile from it. People were scared, talking about the great hurricane of 1938 and that they were worried because of all the development that has taken place since then, there were alot more houses and people to get damaged. Back in 38 my hometown was mostly farms, and not totally developed like in the 80's. There has been alot of debate over Gloria, it was originally a Category 3, but in hindsight it was downgraded to a Category 1 which is the smallest of hurricanes.
Despite this downgrade, where I was had winds in the Category 2 range with winds up to 110 miles per hour. If you think that is not bad think again. Thankfully Gloria hit at low tide so the flooding was minimized, but I will never forget looking out the front windows (before being promptly yelled at to get away from the windows) and seeing the street, and front yard totally underwater. My dad then told me to go open the basement door, and I took 1 step down into the dark, we had no power, then on the 2nd step my foot was totally underwater! The eye was the most exciting part, we got to go outside and see the neighborhood, there were cars crushed by trees and giant branches.
The aftermath of the hurricane was totally great I thought as a kid, we did not have school for a week, and there was all this chopping and cutting of wood to do. In retrospect not having power for 2 weeks must have totally sucked for my parents, I fondly remember it though as 2 weeks of fall BBQ out in the backyard.
Of course this is nothing compared to what the Southern Coastlands gets but we get a taste every once in awhile. In my indtroductory post to Long Island, Irene was hitting the area and I posted a few pictures of my hometown if you want to take a look.
The following link has soem great pictures of past hurricanes on Long Island:
The Changing South and Long Island have commonalities. Just like the Changing South is not a culturally uniform place, neither is Long Island despite it being a much smaller area than the vast region of the Changing South, spanning 12 states versus the roughly 120 mile long 20ish mile wide Long Island.
Religion is very different in the Changing South than it is on Long Island, it is mostly Baptist, while Long Island is predominantly Catholic. This is in part due to the fact that Long Island had a strong influx of immigration from the Irish and Italians who brought thier religion with them, and the fact that the South after 1800 did not have significant immigration.
The Changing South has distinct cultural identities that Long Island does not, such as the "Good-Old-Boys" best stereotyped by TV and movies with such classics as The Dukes of Hazzard, and Smokey and the Bandit, which happen to both feature fast cars and good driving, much like Stock Car racing which is huge in the Changing South. I wish we had this up on Long Island, alas how sad that we didn't. Now keep in mind that these media images help promote some negative stereotypes concerning the Changing South, but both of them deal with a very real issue, which is bootlegging, the transport of illegally made moonshine through dry counties, and areas. Long Island does share that in common with the Changing South, especially during Prohibition however on Long Island much of the bootlegging was done by boat along the waterways around Long Island.
Dukes of Hazzard TV Show Intro
Smokey and The Bandit Trailer
It would be remiss of me to not talk about slavery and the Changing South. Long Island was never very big into the whole slavery scene as most farms were family run, and smaller in scope and did have such massive labor requirements as many places in the changing south. Now being raised on Long Island and a "Northerner/Yankee" I am hesitant to share this but what the heck it was a long time ago so here goes. On my mothers side of the family tree in doing a project years ago I came to find out that a man named Ninian Tannehill who bought a forge in Alabama and established a large plantation there. Later on during the Civil War, they produced ore for the Confederate Army to make munitions. Yeap it blew my mind that here I thought I was a good old northern boy, but turns out way back when I have some confederate roots. Well I feel that I have gotten sidetracked, now back to business!
The South has changed significantly since the Civil War days, slavery is gone, Jim Crow Laws are gone, Black Codes are gone, seperate but equal is gone, and the Civil Rights Movement has happened. The New South is much like Long Island. Personally having family in Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida and having visited all of them I can say the New South I know does not look too different from the Long Island I grew up in. With some distinct differences, at least in my opinion they, including my family have a much slower roll, so to speak than I did has a "Northerner" and I was always told I am moving to fast, to slow down and enjoy life and relax.
Let me start off by saying that I have personally been to the Ozarks, and quite a bit of Appalachia and to try and compare them or draw a common thread with Long Island has me totally baffled.
I guess we can start out with the trailer for a movie from 1972, called Deliverance. I guess you could say that the men canoing down the river are like Long Island folks, golf playing normal type folks, in a land very different from what they know. I will say that this movie promotes sterotypes of the "hillbilly" image of Appalachia, but does show a sharp contrast from the suburban/urban Long Island to Appalachia.
In the book on page 152 it states, "Today, Appalachia's legendary isolation is gone. No longer realistic is the old image of mountain people living in mountain coves and far up steep valleys and having almost no contact with the outside world." Well I was in Appalachia, in West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee in 2002 when I took another one of my grand road trips around the U.S. and let me tell you, it may not be as isolated but it is damn scary nonetheless.
The contrast between Long Island and the Appalachian and Ozark region can be easily seen in the poverty levels, much of the Appalachian region is poverty stricken while Long Island has some poverty, but is wealthy in comparison.
Another sharp contrast to these regions is that they have a low rate of urbanization, and as we have seen in previous blog entries that Long Island is highly urbanized. There are no mineral deposits on Long Island in direct contrast to the coal and ore found in Appalachia.
They do have some items in common, both Appalachia and Long Island have Highland soil. All three regions share Midlatitude deciduous forest, and are in the climate region of Humid Subtropical with the warmest month being over 71.6 degrees. Another thing they do have in common however is that both Long Island and the Appalachia/Ozark regions do participate in general farming to some extent. Long Island does depend somewhat on toursim/vacationers which is much like Branson, MO so the Ozarks and Long Island could be considered similiar in that aspect. Also similiar the 3 areas are all visibly beautiful in different ways. Long Island has its scenic waterfronts, Appalachia has gorgeous greenery and trees, and rollling mountains and views:
The Ozarks have similiar beauty like the Appalachians:
I guess overall there is not too much in common with Long Island, Appalachia, and The Ozarks but one thing. People, the people in all three places are overall friendly and hospitial in my experience and a good time can be had in any of these areas, each unique but worthy of going to see someday.
Since Long Island is not in the bypassed east I am going to talk about something that is a common thread between the two regions. Fishing and seafood related industries. Today on TV you see lots of reality shows, depicting lobster and crab fishing in the Bypassed East. Many people might not realize it but Long Island was known for its clams and oysters and blue claw crab, other good catches for fishing are bluefish, flounder and fluke. Here is a phenominal video shot in 1972 depicting the life of a clammer in West Sayville, I grew up in Sayville, so this was a total blast for me to find and watch and brings back memories.
Much like in the Bypassed East the men go out on thier boats for long days, to catch in this case clams. As you can see in the video it was solo work, 1 man per boat, and dozens of boats in clam bed areas. 8-12 hour days most of which are spent on the boat, working the clam rake, which is exactly what is sounds like, a giant rake on a pole that you stick in the water and drag through the sand at the bottom on the Great South Bay, and hope you scrape up some clams. It is long hard grueling work, but boy let me tell you it is a great workout. In decades past large parts of local economies depended on fishing, clamming, crabbing for jobs and income. This is to a much lesser degree today. In the past the clams caught in NY provided 60% of the nations clams. As far back as the early 20th century things like oysters were exported as far away as Paris, France from the Long Island area.
As mentioned in an earlier blog about manufacturing, whaling was also a major component of Long Island life, and this was spread down from the Bypassed East in the 1600's. So it originated there and actually migrated to Long Island. I wonder if that makes some Long Islanders more like New Englanders?
Long Island is clearly part of the North American Manufacturing Core, although as the 20th Century drew to a close manufacturing became a lesser part of Long Islands economy. Refelcting the trend shown in Table 5.2. One of the main reasons for this is due to one of the largest manufacturing industries closing down, the aircraft industry. Grumman, and Fairchild no longer manufacture on Long Island as they did during the earlier part of the 20th Century.
You typically would not think of Long Island as a place for manufacturing as it has no minerals, steel mills, or other things associated with light and heavy manufacturing but Long Island did have its own industries that were helped by its proximity to water and ports. Whaling is one such industry. Whaling was popular on the east end of Long Island, Southhampton, and Easthampton as well as Sag Harbor were huge whaling centers. Schocking I am sure that the hamptons so posh and exclusive these days was once a bustling whaling community. The whales were harvested for blubber, to be used as oil for lamps and to make candles. If you think about the time period 1640-1870 electricty was not around the primary means of lighting was candles and oil lamps. This was a huge industry for Long Island. (http://www.kioli.org/longisland/random/long-islands-whaling-history/)
As the area moved into the 20th Century aircraft manufacturing was an integral part of life on Long Island. Charles Lindberg took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island in 1927 for his flight to Paris.
Companies such as Grumman Aircraft, which had a huge manufacturing facility 15 minutes from my hometown, and employed a large number of people in my neighborhood, as well as Republic, Fairchild, Sikosky, Sperry and Curtiss all had headquarters and plants on Long Island.
Republic, had a massive plant in Farmindale to assemble aircraft, right next to Fairchild Field, which is still one of the busiest airports in NY State. Below is a photo of one of thier assembly plants in Farmingdale, for FC-2 planes, as well as in later years the F-105 jet.
Here is a clip of the F-105 Thunderchief in action in Vietnam.
Here is a great Video of the A-10 Thunderbolt manufactured by Fairchild-Republic on Long Island.
Republic also made aircraft during wartime, and as a result the factory/assembly facilities had a very unique feature. Since Long Island is along the Atlantic Ocean and during WWII this put us closest to the war in Europe, the assembly plants all were connected by underground tunnels, massive in size so as to move aircraft and parts without exposing them to potential dangers above ground, as well as to keep movements secret. Sadly the Fairchild facilites were torn down and now a giant shopping complex sits on the land. When I was still in high school I had a chance to tour the empty facilites and tunnels, the massive scope and complexity of it was astounding.
Grumman Corporation was a huge part of Long Island industry. Grumman factories worked round the clock to produce planes for WWII, the F-4 Wildcat. They made 12,000 Hellcats during the war, more than any other single factory in the United States. Grumman went on to help design and build the Lunar Excursion Module, that brought Neil Armstrong to the moon, and perhaps one of its most remembered legacy's was the Navy's F-14 Tomcat 712 of which was produced on Long Island. Most of you probably would know the F-14 as the plane in Top Gun with Tom Cruise.
LEM Module on the Moon
Assembly Line Photos of the F-14 in 1973
Here is an awesome video of F-14's.
I must give credit for the pictures and information details to the following, if you have an interest please check out the links and read more.
I am sure that you have figured out I love the aircraft industry on Long Island and its legacy. I grew up with it, and wanted to share it with you all. I hope you enjoyed.
Long Island is an intergral part of the Megalopolis, located smack dab in the middle of it.
Long Island provided great enchancements to the developement of megalopolis in that it helped to provide a good sheltered harbor area around the mouth of the Hudson river, and greatly increased the coastline available for ports and sea access. The land available on Long Island was also essential to the growth of the NYC region.
If you look at the urbanized area of Long Island spread through time the change is dramatic as shown below. The spread of population and outward growth from the core area of NYC and other cities in the BosWash after 1950 is astounding. For example in looking at Long Island alone, when my father grew up there in the 1950's was not very urbanized. The line on the map below where he, and I both grew up is the shift in color from 1970 to 1990 urbanization. So when he was growing up in the 50's it was very rural, still lots of farmland, as opposed to my childhood in the 70's and 80's the urbanization was spreading, and I got to grow up watching farms being sold off and housing put up instead. This goes along with the shift in the 1950's from the central city to suburbs.
The shift from rural use of the land to urban use, was in no small part a force of ecnomics, as areas urbanized the land value increased and farming became less profitable, as opposed to just selling the family farm for development.
This radical shift from city centers to suburbs was heavily impacted by one man, who if you grew up on Long Island you know because he made Long Island what is is today, and helped to spread megalopolis quickly throughout the Northeast. That man is Robert Moses, as far as the spread of population and creation of suburbs is concerned is probably the most important man in the 20th century.
He also is the man responsible for the creation of the following structures that you may know:
The Triborough Bridge, The Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, Throgs Neck Bridge, Bronk-Whitestone Bridge, and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. Moses played an integral role in developing many expressways around the NYC area: Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Staten Island Expressway, the Cross-Bronx Expressway, the Belt Parkway, the Laurelton Parkway, as well as helping to get Shea Stadium built, Lincoln Center, and having the United Nations headquarters built in NYC. Moses also helped to create parks and open areas for thousands of people, with his creation of Jones Beach, and hundreds of parks and playgrounds in the NYC metro area for people to use and enjoy.
Robert Moses also was responsible for large scale creation of public housing in NYC such as Stuyvesant Towns, Peter Cooper Village and Co-Op City.
His ultimate contribution was to the car culture, and suburban sprawl that is commonplace today in BosWash. Is it a coincidence that Robert Moses was influencial from the 1920's up until the 1970's in teh NYC/Long Island area and this is the same time frame as massive urban expansion in BosWash? There was a great book on Moses called The Power Broker, by Robert A. Caro that you can read if you are really interested in learning more about this great man. It won a Pulizter Prize, and I have read it.This half hour historical peice on Robert Moses only begins to scratch the surface but I found it interesting.
Overall the spread of Megalopolis over Long Island was sped up by Robert Moses, and this congestion and urban sprawl led to a great many problems on Long Island, as is common with other areas of BosWash. Pollution being one of the biggest, the waterways near Long Island became polluted with rain runoff contanimated with road pollutants such as rubber, oil and other car fluids, yard waste, feces. Much of Long Island did not have sewer systems rather they used cesspools, which leeched laundry detergents and other household items poured down the sink into local waterways.
Another problem associated with Megalopolis is government. You have many layers of governing bodies that often are in conflict with one another, all exerting levels of control over areas of Long Island. If you take my hometown of Sayville Long Island as an example, we have NY State, The Suffolk County Legislature, The Town of Islip, and then Sayville, if you add in the U.S. government that is at least 5 layers of governing bodies. Looking at the illustration below you can clearly see that in Suffolk county alone, there are 237 governing or jurisdictional units. Talk about a political nightmare and mess, it is truly a wonder anything ever gets done. You can note that Nassau County has 202, and Kings and Queens while technically located physically on Long Island are buroughs of NYC and are controlled by NYC.
Long Island was settled by various Native American Indian tribes long before European settlers arrived. There were 13 tribes settled on Long Island the Matincock, Nesquake, Setalcott, Corchaug, Shinnecock, Manhasset, Montauks, Canarsee, Rockaway, Merrick, Marsapeague, Secatogue and the Unkechaug, these tribes also had many parts with thier own names. Many of the names of rivers and features bear indian names and so do some towns. (http://www.richmondhillhistory.org/indians.html#IndianTribes)
During the first phase of European settlementLong Island was originally a Dutch colony, but eventually became an English Colony. Most of the immirgrants coming to Long Island were from northern and western Europe, followed by a shift to southern and eastern European imigration. For Long Island this was quite a few Italian and Slavic peoples, although there was a large Irish immirgration but the Irish were considered undesirable as much as the Italians and eastern Europeans. Long Island was largely settled by the time the United States came to being in 1776.
Today the population of Long Island is still largely white of European decent as shown by the slides from lecture, the Black, Asian, Latino and Native American populations of Long Island are incredibly low by percentage. Long Island is not a very ethnically diverse culture of people. Among many factors that inhibit tihs is the cost of living on Long Island, being high, is not conducive to many of the minority populations in the United States. The racial/cultural lack of diversity was evident when I was growing up, when I graduated high school out of my graduating class of 254, there were no black students, Indians and Asians make up the rest of the minorities there were less than 10 of them combined at that time. Many of the towns on Long Island repeat this pattern, some are more culturally diverse than others but it seems that the further east on Long Island that you get, the more homogenous the population, with proximity to New York City (NYC) bringing more ethnic and cultural diversity.
The lack of cultural differences is also shown in the predominate religions on Long Island. Overwhelming Catholic and Christian there are almost all other religions represented but in the vast minority. For example in the town I grew up in when I graduated high school 95% of my classmates where a denomination of Catholicism, my town of 16,000 people had 12 churches along the lines of Christianity, no mosques, 1 very tiny Synagogue, and there was only 1 Mormom temple in all of Suffolk County at the time I was growing up.
According to 2010 Census you can see a shift in racial/ethnicity as you move away from NYC towards Suffolk County (which is where I grew up). And according to the Association of Religion Data Archives for 2000 a shift towards Catholic/Christian denominations.
Racial Groups, ethnicity, and religoius groups on Long Island Compated to State and Nation
County
Population 2010 Census
% white
% Black or African American
% Asian
% Other
% Mixed Race
% Hispanic/Latino of any race
Kings
2,504,700
42.8
34.3
10.5
9.3
3
17.6
Queens
2,230,720
39.7
19.1
22.9
13.7
4.5
57.5
Nassau
1,339,532
73
11.1
7.6
5.9
2.4
14.6
Suffolk
1,493,350
80.8
7.4
3.4
5.9
2.4
16.5
LI Total
7,568,304
54.7
20.4
12.3
9.3
3.2
20.5
NY State
19,378,102
65.7
15.9
7.3
8
3
17.6
USA
308,745,538
72.4
12.6
4.8
7.3
2.9
16.3
source is the 2010 US Census
County
Population 2010 Census
% Catholic
% Not Affilaited
% Jewish
% Protestant
Estimate of % not reporting
Kings
2,504,700
37
4
15
8
33
Queens
2,230,720
29
37
11
5
15
Nassau
1,339,532
52
9
16
7
15
Suffolk
1,493,350
52
21
7
8
11
LI Total
7,568,304
40
18
12
7
20
NY State
19,378,102
42
20
9
10
16
USA
308,745,538
22
37
2
23
12
source is the Association of Religion Data Archives for 2000
As you can clearly see, the population density decreases as you move away from NYC with Nassau County being very urban and as you move into Suffolk county it gets less and less urbanized, until near the east end of Long Island you have farms and vinyards and open protected spaces.
To show an example of the different levels of urbanization of Long Island, here is a a video of the North Fork of Long Island, specifically over Cutchogue. Notice there is farmland, and lots of open space, not what most people assume are qualities of Long Island.
To contrast here is a cockpit view of a plane landing at LaGuardia airport, which is on the North shore of Long Island close to NYC. You can notice a vast difference in the developement along the ground as far as buildings, lack openess and space.
I hope this gives you a sense of the diversity of Long Island, and takes away some of the stereotype that Long Island is just an extension of NYC, because it is certainly not.
