Larry’s beach - and a scale quiz

Just about exactly a year ago, I had the pleasure of posting some of Larry
Deemer’s spectacular photographs from his local beach at Breezy Point,
Queens, New York. I’ve kept in touch with Larry since then and, for a couple of
bucks and a thirty-five minute subway ride, we escaped Manhattan a couple of
weeks ago and journeyed to the limits of Brooklyn. Larry had graciously agreed
to my taking up his kind invitation to see his beach for myself, and whisked us
down Flatbush Avenue, and across Jamaica Bay – resonant names! – into the
borough of Queens  and out onto the ever-changing chunk of Atlantic-facing sand
that is the Rockaway Peninsula and Breezy Point. Reflecting its
nationally-unique demographics, the community is often referred to as “the Irish
Riviera.” Its year-round residents number only a few thousand, amongst whom are
our generous and hospitable hosts for that afternoon, Larry, Lou, and Buck.

What a place to live – just a subway ride and a million miles from Manhattan,
with the ability simply to stroll out and enjoy the ever-changing days, seasons,
and moods of the beach. It was warm and appropriately breezy afternoon, and we
walked, talking, stopping to enjoy and collect the variety of treasures that the
beach had to offer that day, watch the birds, photograph the patterns. A truly
memorable and immensely enjoyable few hours:

And here’s a scale quiz: one of the photos below is from Breezy Point beach, the
other is from Mars – which is which?

Larry told us how the beach had grown over the last fifty years, partly
as the result of the construction of the jetty at the end of the sand spit, the
longshore drift of sand down the coast from Long Island being backed up behind
it, building back eastwards along the coast. So I looked at the USGS website
and immediately found two publications on the sedimentary history of Breezy
Point and the Gateway
National Recreation Area. The links are given at the end of this post, but
here’s the introduction to one of them, and an image that dramatically shows the
scale of shifting sands over little more than a century:

Had you planned a visit to Breezy Point before the Civil War you would have
been in for a surprise. It did not exist! All the land west of the vicinity of
Jacob Riis Park has formed within a little more than a century. This is largely
because of the construction of a groin field to protect the beaches at Fort
Tilden, and the placement of the Breezy Point jetty to prevent the filling of
Rockaway Inlet. The sand has been contributed naturally by the westward
longshore drift along the south shore of Long Island, particularly the Rockaway
barrier island and sources offshore.

[USGS publications: http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/nyc/parks/loc69.htm;
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2004/1257/html/gate.htm] SIGNATURE

Originally published at: https://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2010/04/larrys-beach-and-a-scale-quiz.html