Sources:
- Fire Island Association, “The Fight to Save Fire Island from Robert Moses,” https://www.fireislandassociation.org/recent/archived-articles/the-fight-to-save-fire-island-from-robert-moses
- Joshua Ruff, review of Christopher Verga, Saving Fire Island from Robert Moses: The Fight for a National Seashore (The History Press, 2019), in Long Island History Journal, June 18, 2020. URL: https://lihj.cc.stonybrook.edu/2020/reviews/ruff-saving-fire-island-from-robert-moses-review/
- NPS, “History of Fire Island National Seashore,” https://www.nps.gov/fiis/learn/historyculture/history-of-fire-island-national-seashore.htm
The Fire Island Association’s account (verbatim)
As Fire Island emerged as a car-free, idyllic beach getaway in the 1950s, island real estate boomed! Newly established beach bungalows, and even whole new communities, were built by New Yorkers who escaped their urban lives in the summers to soak up the sun and appreciate the wonders of nature on a barrier island.
By the early 1960s, however, growing concerns about unregulated development prompted residents from several communities to take private steps to preserve some of the more fragile and unique areas of Fire Island, such as the Sunken Forest. After a severe nor’easter caused widespread damage and flooding in March of 1962, Robert Moses revived his 30-year-old proposal to build a four-lane highway down the 32-mile length of Fire Island. Moses claimed that his elevated road would hold the dunes in place and protect island homes from hurricanes. He also argued that his road would provide access to the beach for thousands of people across the New York metropolitan area.
Fire Islanders, led by Dunewood’s Murray Barbash and his brother-in-law Irving Like, were alarmed and outraged by the Moses road plan. They soon realized that they urgently needed the protection of the federal government. The Fire Island Voters Association, formed to unify the disparate island communities, [began] fund raising and writing letters, petitioning Congress to create a Fire Island National Seashore (FINS) to preserve the island’s natural habitat and manage future development on a roadless island.
The David vs. Goliath fight by island residents against Moses, the Power Broker, gained strong support from a growing and influential environmental movement. The Governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, also saw an opportunity to use opposition to the road to rein in the seemingly unstoppable Moses.
In a stunning victory still celebrated by Fire Islanders, the Fire Island National Seashore was formally established in September, 1964. Robert Moses suffered a rare defeat and never saw his fiercely opposed road built on the island. But Rockefeller did rename Fire Island State Park for him in 1964.
Joshua Ruff’s review of Verga’s book — additional detail
Verga points out that even as Moses succeeded in building his parkway system on the mainland, he encountered opposition to his plans for Ocean Parkway with barrier island residents in the 1920s. Eventually using the devastation of Fire Island from the Hurricane of 1938 as a rationale for his “dune-preserving” parkway, Moses lost this early episode primarily due to concerns of cost to taxpayers.
(This confirms the Moses Fire Island parkway plan first surfaced in the 1920s — concurrent with the Jones Beach fight — and was revived after the 1938 hurricane, then again after the 1962 nor’easter. Three attempts over 40 years; all defeated.)
Two talented activist residents, Maurice Barbash, a homebuilder, and Irving Like, a lawyer, “sketched…(their) ideas on a napkin,” much the way that Moses had once [made] his initial scrawled plans for Jones Beach.
(The mythological symmetry is intentional: Moses started Jones Beach on the back of a napkin in the 1920s; the men who killed his Fire Island plan started their counter-proposal on the back of a napkin too.)
Barbash led community town hall meetings to promote the national seashore and argue against the extension of Ocean Parkway. Pins, stickers, and hand-painted signs were made, door-to-door canvassing was executed, and prewritten letters of support for Fire Island National Seashore, intended to be sent to state and federal politicians, were distributed. At the first public hearing for the proposed road, on July 10, 1962, at the Jones Beach West Bathhouse, more than 1,000 protesters showed up, carrying signs reading “Ban the Beep” and singing Pete Seeger-influenced songs like “I isn’t a-gonna study roads no more.” Moses and his engineers adjourned the meeting after just 20 minutes.
(That 20-minute adjournment is one of the most telling moments in Moses’s career. He had spent 40 years controlling public hearings. Here he simply walked out — the room had turned against him for the first time, in his own bathhouse, on his own beach.)
NPS Fire Island National Seashore — the legal architecture
Fire Island National Seashore was established by Congress on September 11, 1964.
One of the first portions of Fire Island to be protected from development was the Sunken Forest. On Friday, September 9, 1938, an article in the Suffolk County News announced that Robert Cushman Murphy “Fears Fire Island Highway Would Ruin Sunken Forest” in response to concerns that the county might build a road along Fire Island Beach.
(The conservation argument predates the 1938 hurricane that Moses used as cover. Murphy’s warning was published 12 days before the storm. The intellectual opposition was already in place.)
In the 1950s, a concerned group of private citizens gradually cobbled together a 50-acre tract of beach, dunes and ancient holly forest just east of Point O’Woods through a fundraising campaign spearheaded in 1952 by the Wildlife Preserves, Inc., and The Nature Conservancy. Sunken Forest Sanctuary was officially dedicated as the Sunken Forest Preserve in 1960.
In May 1966, the Sunken Forest Preserve, Inc. donated the property to the recently established (1964) Fire Island National Seashore, under the condition that the property shall always be maintained in its natural state and operated as a sanctuary, and that no public road or highway shall be built through it.
(The 1966 deed restriction is the legal kill-shot on any future Moses-style attempt to build through the Sunken Forest. The land literally cannot be turned into a roadbed without violating the donation terms.)
The Wilderness Act was passed on September 3, 1964. Fire Island National Seashore’s enabling legislation refers to a zone between Davis Park and Smith Point County Park for which “access … shall be provided by ferries and footpaths only” and “no development or plan for the convenience of visitors shall be undertaken therein which would be incompatible with the preservation of the flora or fauna or the physiographic conditions now prevailing.”
After many years of local involvement, this portion of the Seashore was designated as the Otis Pike Fire Island High Dune Wilderness on December 23, 1980.
(The 1980 Wilderness designation is the strongest possible federal land protection. It locks Fire Island’s central wilderness zone permanently against any vehicular development — exactly the opposite of what Moses had spent 40 years trying to build.)
The chronology of Moses’s three parkway attempts
| Attempt | Trigger | Defeated by |
|---|---|---|
| 1924–1928 | Moses’s original Long Island State Park Commission plan | Barrier-island residents and cost concerns |
| Post-1938 | The Long Island Express hurricane used as “dune-preserving parkway” rationale | Cost concerns / WWII intervening / postwar inertia |
| Post-March 1962 | The Ash Wednesday nor’easter used as the same rationale | Fire Island Voters Association + Barbash + Like + Rockefeller + JFK administration’s federal seashore doctrine + Sept 11, 1964 FINS legislation |
Why the third attempt failed when the first two only stalled
The first two times, Moses ran out of steam. The third time, he was actively beaten. The difference was:
- A coordinated grassroots organization (the Fire Island Voters Association) instead of fragmented town-by-town opposition
- A federal alternative (national seashore designation) that didn’t exist as a tool in 1924 or 1938 but that the Kennedy administration had pioneered with Cape Cod (1961) and Padre Island (1962)
- A governor (Rockefeller) who saw the political benefit in using the opposition to clip Moses’s wings
- A martyred president whose name and legacy gave the seashore movement moral authority through 1963-64
The Tobay/JFK Wildlife Sanctuary renaming sits in the middle of this confluence — it was Oyster Bay’s way of attaching its 1925 victory to the federal Kennedy framework that finished the job 39 years later.