Source: Alexandra Parsons Wolfe, Jones Beach State Park, prepared for the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (SPLIA, now Preservation Long Island), July 21, 2004. Full PDF: https://preservationlongisland.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/pli_reports_Jones-Beach-Report-2004-sm.pdf
This report is significant because it confirms — in formal preservation literature, citing Caro and the NYT directly — exactly what happened in 1925-26 between Moses and the three towns, and it is the source for the critical detail that Oyster Bay only ever transferred its eastern slice (Gilgo) and kept the rest.
Significance of Jones Beach (page 1)
Described as “what a public beach should be” when it opened in 1929, Jones Beach State Park is an extraordinary synthesis of planning, landscape architecture, architecture, and engineering. It was the first public seaside facility in the nation executed on a grand civic scale and the first to provide resort type activities to the general population. It was also the first to incorporate automotive transport into its design.
(Note: the parkway-first design philosophy is the exact thing Fire Island’s residents would fight, and beat, four decades later.)
Acreage and origin (page 2)
[Jones Beach] consists of 2,413 sea-side acres extracted from the Towns of Hempstead and Oyster Bay and includes six miles of sandy beaches along the Atlantic Ocean and a calmer [bay frontage].
The 1925 town referenda (pages 3–4)
Jones Beach was among the earliest properties acquired by Robert Moses. In 1925, he propositioned the Towns of Hempstead and Oyster Bay to transfer ownership of their South Shore barrier beaches. The citizens of Hempstead voted against Moses’ proposition, and in Oyster Bay it was defeated before reaching the ballot. In 1926, after Moses created the Hempstead Development Commission to promote (through public education) a second proposal, the Town of Hempstead granted the Long Island [State Park Commission the land].
The critical footnote 19 (the Tobay/JFK genesis evidence)
Oyster Bay eventually transferred a small, eastern portion of their beach which became Gilgo State Park in Babylon.
This footnote is the load-bearing piece of evidence. It confirms:
- Oyster Bay defeated the 1925 full transfer entirely.
- Subsequently they handed over only the eastern slice (Gilgo).
- The middle slice — Tobay Beach + the wetlands behind it that became the JFK Memorial Wildlife Sanctuary — was retained by the Town of Oyster Bay.
- That retention persists to this day. Tobay Beach is still owned and operated by the Town of Oyster Bay, restricted to town residents (the Wikipedia article on Tobay Beach confirms this for 2026).
Jones Beach engineering (page 4)
According to Robert Caro, between 1927 and 1928 about 40 million cubic yards of fine grain sand was pumped from the ocean floor to raise the entire park area and the seventeen miles of the causeway fourteen feet [above mean high tide, to prevent flooding].
(This is the engineering precedent Moses would later cite for his “dune-preserving parkway” Fire Island plan — claiming a similar elevated road could protect Fire Island homes from hurricanes. Fire Islanders rejected the analogy.)
Opening (page 5)
In 1929 both the Wantagh Causeway and the East Bathhouse with dining facilities were completed, and Jones Beach State Park, providing four miles of Atlantic surf and a half-mile of calmer bay waters to the general public, opened on August 4th to great success. During its second year of operation, with the completion of the Water Tower, Jones Beach was already used to full capacity.
Continued expansion
Also in 1931, the Town of Hempstead conveyed Short Beach, an adjacent, two-mile parcel west of Jones Beach, and the right of way for construction of a new western causeway to the [Long Island State Park Commission].
(Hempstead, having been bought, kept giving. Oyster Bay never restarted the negotiations on the middle slice.)
What this report establishes for the master timeline
- The 1925 town fight is the canonical origin of the entire Long Island state-parks system, and it is the moment when Oyster Bay’s middle barrier-beach slice was definitively walled off from Moses control.
- The report is from a preservation-society source — not partisan — and it cites Caro’s Power Broker as authority. The narrative is settled history in the preservation field.
- Footnote 19 is the smoking gun: Oyster Bay’s transfer was small and eastern. The Tobay/JFK parcel never moved.
- The 2,413 acres of Jones Beach State Park come “from the Towns of Hempstead and Oyster Bay” — but the Oyster Bay contribution is the eastern (Gilgo) slice only. Everything iconic about Jones Beach proper — the bathhouses, the Water Tower, the Central Mall, the boardwalk — sits on land Hempstead voters originally rejected by 3 to 1 and only handed over after Moses cut the corruption deal with Doughty.