Hike #1082; Howard Beach to Nickerson Beach

Hike #1082; Howard Beach to Nickerson Beach

10/18/17 Howard Beach to Nickerson Beach NY with Anne ?, Jack Lowry, and Sarah Jones

This next hike would be a point to point, the next in my Long Island series I’d been periodically working on.
The Long Island series geographically started the first time we walked into Brooklyn years ago, as that is technically part of the Long Island, but I didn’t yet plan to walk all the way out Long Island. My Long Island out series started a couple of years ago when we followed the waterfront on the Holiday NYC hike out from Manhattan.
In follow-up hikes, we went from the east side of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge down to Coney Island, then two hikes east of Coney Island to Howard Beach and from the old airport.
This time, we’d start at Howard Beach and hike to Nickerson Beach.
I worked this one out because Jillane was going to Grenada to visit a friend for a week, and she wanted a ride to JFK airport. I had Thursday through Sunday off this week due to my previous week of covering my last weekend for the season, and I wanted to do a full Thursday day hike anyway, so I figured this was the perfect day to post my next Long Island series trip. It was only a very short ride from JFK.
I brought Jillane there, dropped her off, and then fought through some traffic for a bit to get to the waterfront. I found the one bridge that doesn’t take EZ Pass, and then had to sit and fill out papers to pay it off by check. A real pain.
Still, I managed to get to the beach in time to watch the sun coming up.

Sunrise over Long Island

I had plenty of time before the meeting time. Like so many other hikes, I initially had a bunch of people signed up, but they all seemed to drop off at the last minute.
I shouldn’t be too upset about it; when I post stuff closer to home, I always have a ton of people. Now that I’m posting more risky farther away things, people don’t want to come due to the inconvenience. In some ways, I really wish more people would be into doing some of the further away stuff here and there, but I understand it’s just not what they’re into really. I’m slightly concerned that if I keep posting farther away trips, I might ruin my record of always having someone show up since 2004.
Just Anne showed up at Nickerson Beach when I arrived. Jack messaged me that he wanted to meet up late. So, with two cars, at least we could get to the starting point.

Spring Creek Park at Howard Beach

I hadn’t quite figured out the starting point yet. In fact, I hadn’t really figured out the end either. It was a good thing I posted Nickerson Beach as the meet point for the time of year I did, because it was I think $15 admission per car to go in during popular season. We didn’t have to pay anything.
We headed in my car to Howard Beach, and drive around parallel with where I had gone on the previous hike. The Belt Parkway into town has a good multi use path along it, and I wanted to make sure I connected.
I found a spot to park on the west side along Spring Creek Park, where we could simply step down through some reeds onto a trail. I could see the Belt Parkway Path we had walked before off to the right, as we were still close to that. We walked back to the highway, stepped over a pile of wood, and I stood in the middle of the path. I remembered walking through here, and having pain in my feet after the long stretch of paved trail. Having connected, I was satisfied to continue to the south.

William James Howard

Howard Beach was started in 1897 by William J. Howard who had a goat farm and manufactured Kidd Gloves. He eventually dredged and filled lands on what is now Howard Beach until he had 1500 acres, constructed homes, and built a hotel. Long Island Railroad established a station and initially named it Rambersville in 1905, but it was officially named Howard Beach in 1916.
Eventually it turned into a more sprawling urban area, a part of Queens, and remains more upper middle class.
My plan was to follow the waterfront from here to the south, cross the bridges over Cross Bay Blvd, and continue on Long Island to the south.
I was actually missing a section of beach between Howard Beach and Coney Island area that I hadn’t walked, but I’d physically connected this, so it was secondary. I’d come back and walk that another time for certain, maybe in the Summer.
My main initiative was to continue across Long Island heading to the east.
We walked along the trails through the park, which were wide roadways through the phragmites. It was pleasant and relaxing, and reminded me of my NJ Perimeter series. I miss those odd hikes at times, because it was something of a sort no one else was doing. This was so very similar.
The pathways led out to a southwest facing beach, and we were able to continue south and around to the Cross Bay Blvd, adjacent to the Cross Bay Bridge’s North Channel Bridge.

I don't practice Santaria

As we neared the bridge, a couple were sitting and fishing below. Anne was commenting on all of the litter down there. I don’t think that couple was responsible for it, because they seemed none too happy about it either. We then moved toward the bridge where we found an effigy perched with a flag. Anne said it was some kind of voodoo or Santaria type of thing.
I don’t know about that, but either way we continued to the bridge and stepped beneath it where we found a walkway. We climbed the guide rail, and then walked a ramp up to the west side, and began to cross the bridge with some excellent views.

View from the bridge

There were a lot of fishermen on the bridge, and we carefully weaved past them as not to disturb their day. Jack was arriving at the other side of the bridges with Sarah, so I wanted to keep moving to catch up with them.

Original 1939 Cross Bay Bridge

The bridge was concrete with concrete walkways. It was a modern bridge, technically the Cross Bay Veterans Memorial Bridge. It was built in 1970 to replace the original lift bridge that had been built in 1939 at roughly the same spot.
To the northwest, we could see Manhattan, with the Freedom Tower dominating the skyline. To the west a bit more, we could also see the tops of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge above the buildings and islands.

NYC view

We got to the end of this North Channel Bridge section, and there was a park area to the right. There was a nice pavilion and parking area, and we walked on down to it. I could see a path heading back toward the bridge, and it went under to the other side.

South side of the bridge

We took to that path and passed beneath the bridge, from which point I could see old wooden pilings that might have been timbers from the original bridge.
We continued on a section of beach on the other side heading south. I thought we might get through, but after a while of walking we came to an inlet we could not walk through without getting mucky. We had to go back and get on the highway again heading to the south.
To the east of us, we could see trains of the Long Island Railroad crossing the rail bridge over the bay. We spotted a Great White Egret in the shallow water as well.

View at Jamaica Bay with rail bridge

After a bit on the road, we were able to cut into the woods to the left. This woods road we found headed all the way back to a fenced in area along the railroad. It wasn’t where we wanted to be, and we had to turn back. We made our way to another foot path which went to the south, parallel through woods with the Cross Bay highway.
We followed the path for a while, and when we came to the next intersection, happened upon a large group of school kids. We walked with them for a bit, but not for lack of want to pass them. They were really slow. We eventually pushed past, and it was nice to be on a wooded foot path. This was all part of Jamaica Bay Refuge.

Jamaica Bay Refuge Trail

We emerged from the back woods trail to the highway once again, and then continued to the town of Broad Channel.
The Broad Channel Island, actually called “Rulers Bar Hassock” is the only inhabited island in the entire Jamaica Bay, with three thousand residents.
It was developed in 1915 as a residential area. Today, it still retains some historic character, which I first noted when I saw one of the old fire call boxes. It’s an antiquated call system with buttons in case of fire or other emergency.

1915 Library of Congress scene on Broad Channel

I was quite surprised to see it there. Most places always do away with these types of things.
We walked around some portajohn rental place, with them all blocking the sidewalks and such, and then passed through the middle of the little settlement.
We passed by the Queens Public Library, which was yet another oddity. It looked as though it was built into an old 1950s burger joint, but I can’t be sure. I couldn’t find anything on their city library websites to say what exactly it was.
We continued through town to the north side of the southern Cross Bay Blvd Bridge, and I got nervous that we wouldn’t be able to get across.

Old call box

There were “no pedestrian” signs as we neared it, and I didn’t know what we’d do. Then, I saw that the path was rerouted to the left due to some kind of construction. We went along the path in a sweeping route, then back to the bridge to cross.
There were more great views from the southernmost bridge, including a Long Island Railroad swinging bridge still in service. While we were up there, we were able to watch it working, as a boat was coming through. I train went across immediately after.

Queens Library

There was a guy riding a bike across the bridge, despite the fact that we saw signs saying that bikes must be walked, and a cop went right by without stopping him. I guess that was consolation that petty crimes wouldn’t be a problem out in the area, not that we planned to commit any. The areas of these beaches though, would be a bit questionable.
We reached the island, all part of the Rockaway Peninsula, most commonly known as “The Rockaways” when referred to by New Yorkers. I had never been to any of these beaches before, so it was something I’d pictured as rather uptight and rich area.

The swing bridge of Long Island Railroad

The area of today's Rockaways was originally inhabited by Native American Lenape tribe, but it was sold by the Mohegan tribe (who probably had no rights to it) to the Dutch in 1939. It was later sold to the English in 1685 before being purchased by Richard Cornell.
The name “Rockaway” is actually a corrupted native American word, “rack-a-wak-e”, which means “Place of Sands”. The area became a popular resort area starting in the 1830s.
Connections to the Rockaways by the Long Island Railroad in the 1880s further contributed to the growth of the tourism industry on the peninsula. Lines were built all along the sand barrier, from Far Rockaay to the east, and from the north as well.

Rail bridge

We could see a massive viaduct over the streets soon after crossing into Long Island, and it was very cool to see the railroads here are doing quite a healthy amount of business. I was surprised that they still traveled so far to these more remote beaches.
Much of the area was destroyed or badly damaged following a disastrous hurricane in 1893. An entire island section known as Hog Island, with hotels and such, was completely destroyed, and the island was totally gone by 1902. It was reported that waste deep water was walked through in Brooklyn.

Yellow Submarine!

Now, I am by no means a “climate denyer”. I personally thing it’s foolish to make such an outlandish statement that the human footprint on the Earth could be so easily healed over. However, I do acknowledge, as a student of history, that we have had terrible catastrophic weather conditions throughout the mid Atlantic and probably everywhere else in recorded history. The 1893 disaster, when the hurrican hit Long Island, could easily happen again. Everyone talks of how terrible the tropical storms Sandy and Irene were, but New York will be badly devastated again, and I fear quite soon. We have what are referred to as “100 year floods”, which were rather generic. It’s more likely that these stores will show up at about every 70 or 80 or so years. I think it will happen soon. Maybe next year.

Historic Rockaway Beach advert

The area’s heyday, not unlike Coney Island, came in the time after a the rebuilding from the 1893 storm. It was known somewhat collectively as “Hammels” for a time, after Louis Hammel who developed a vacation community there. It soon turned into bungalo homes after the heyday of the amusements.

Seaside Beach

We headed directly to the boardwalk and beach, and found out that Jack and Sarah were just a bit to the east of us in the community of Arverne.
Arverne takes it’s name from developer Remington Vernam, who’s signature “R. Vernam” inspired the name. He originally intended for a grand canal similar to Amsterdam to be built, but when the plan fell through, the right of way was turned into a vehicle thorofare.
We walked the board walk, which was often a concrete material, with treks or something making up a few sections of walkway. Some of this was probably rebuilt following Sandy.

Arverne to Far Rockaway

We met up with Jack and Sarah soon, and Jack was carrying his Martin Backpacker guitar.
We got down on Rockaway Beach, and continued to hike to the east from here.
The hit single “Rockaway Beach” by the Ramones was actually written about this location. The Ramones, although known for their pioneer Punk, were actually fans of early Beach Boys and Beatles music. In fact, the name “Ramone” was taken because when the Beatles started, they all had stage names, and James Paul McCartney took the name “Paul Ramone”. Bassist Dee Dee Ramone frequented Rockaway Beach and penned the song, in a sort of Beach Boys style.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/6siGKxcKol0

It was a really relaxing section going ahead. My feet felt gross in my beat up old shoes, and so I walked down into the crashing waves to let them cool off. There were lots of birds around, and little ones with black heads.

Plovers?

The only black headed birds I'm used to seeing on the beaches are Laughing Gulls, and these were far too small to be them.
I had thought that maybe they were Plovers, which nest on the beaches. In NJ, many beaches close to public during nesting times. Upon looking them up, the only birds I can find that appear to resemble these little birds are Hooden Plovers, which are native to Australia. I'm not sure if they migrate this far, or if they are invasive to here.
We continued along the beach, and stepped over jetties as we made our way to the east.

Far Rockaway

We skirted East Rockaway Inlet as we neared Far Rockaway, where the peninsula connects to the main land. We skirted around some fencing and out into parking areas associated with a hotel or apartments or something. When we couldn't follow the water any further, we'd have to head inland. There was a street sign with "End" written on it, which I for some reason thought was positive that it didn't say "Dead End". We turned right on Seagirt Avenue and followed it to the east out toward the entrance to the Atlantic Beach Bridge.

END!

A twisting walkway made it's way up to the Atantic Beach Bridge. We followed it up, and saw a sign reading that there was up to a $250 fine for riding bicycles across the bridge. That's pretty harsh!
We headed out across, with some nice views of the Reynolds Channel it was called.
Once on the other side, we saw some workers installing new wooden fences along the edges of the walkways. They stared at us oddly as we walked by, and turned off the path through the grass, down hill to the north.

We turned right on Bay Blvd and headed west. I wanted to be sure to try and do the entire waterfront. In case I ever do some perimeter of the entire east coast or something (you never know), I don't want to have to go back.
When we got a short distance down the road, there was a work crew with the sewers and such all opened up. We went by them and continued to the end of the the street, but there was no way to get to the waterfront. We made a left hand turn on Granada Lane, but it was a dead end. A lady on the upper porch of the last house directed us to go back and around, that there was no way out that way (odd, since Jillane had just gone to Granada).
We headed back, and then turned right on Eldorado Street south. When we got to Atantic Blvd and tried to go west, we came upon a private beach club property with a guard out front.

Private club looking like shit

The google maps of the area designate the area as "Silver Point County Park", so I figured we could just walk in. We tried walking out, and the guy in the guard shack told us we couldn't, and that it was all private beach club. I tried talking to him about the county park that was said to be there, and he said something about county park being way far away another direction. I don't think the guy was that bright or even well informed. He was probably thinking I was talking about some area way to the east.
It turns out that a lot of this area is private beach clubs. As we headed out Atlantic, went down Eldorado another block to the south, then followed the Ocean Blvd to the east, all of the access points were these private clubs.

Atlantic Beach

It wouldn't bother me so much getting kicked out of a beach or area like that if they at least kept it up, but the properties looked like shit. We walked along the one with the largest parking area and saw an out building that was in rough shape, then the sidewalk in front of it was completely grown over with weeds, which went right over their own railing. People were using the shroud of weeds to hide bags of discarded trash. It enrages me to think of these rich yahoos taking this place and making it exclusive to them, and yet making it look like a shitty slum, and probably worse looking than the low income residents lands they are trying to keep away.

Pre 1918 view of life guard station near NY Ave.

Eventually, we found a spot to get through and out to the beach. It said residents only, but at that point, and with the upkeep of everything, I said "who cares, obviously not them" and headed out. We began following the beach again to the east.
We continued along Atlantic Beach toward Long Beach.
This entire island, much like the Rockaway Peninsula to the west, didn't see much activity until the start of the tourism trade in the mid to late 1800s. Congress established a life saving station at the beach in 1849, and later had a US Coast Guard office until it burned down in 1918.
A builder from Brooklyn named Austin Corbin formed a partnership with the Long Island Railroad in 1880 and began developing a tourist development. He constructed what he claimed to be the "world's largest hotel". Other investors from Coney Island and elsewhere came to Long Beach and built what was to be described as the "Riviera of the East".

Historic postcard of Long Beach Hotel

The Long Island Railroad laid out track to the beach and hotel in 1880s, but the washouts on the line were so frequent that they abandoned in 1894.

Burning of the hotel

In July of 1907, faulty electric caused a fire to break out in the giant Long Beach hotel. It and several other adjacent buildings burned to the ground.
We continued walking along, and Jack and Sarah were pretty hungry. I could go for some food myself, but I was somewhat concerned about getting to the end point. I don't know these parks well, and I was concerned that they might close the gate after dark. Fortunately, Anne reminded me that they had a camp ground on site, so the gates could not be closed.
We did a search of places to eat, and found that the community of Long Beach had several, including a pizza place not too far from the board walk.

Historic image of Long Beach Station

Gino's Pizza was located very near to the old Long Island Railroad Station in Long Beach, so we decided to head to that. The station at the site was constructed in 1909 shortly after another just to the south of that site had closed.

Long Island RR station today

Just as we got to where we'd need to cut up to the board walk, the beach was closed anyway for some sort of new pier development or something going in, so it was perfect.
We headed up to the main street and walked back and forth a bit looking for the pizza place. it wasn't immediately obvious, but we soon found it and sat down.

YUM

This looked like high quality pizza, and I couldn't make up my mind. I first saw the salad slice they had, followed by their meat lovers' and the vodka slice. I decided to just get all three, which was probably a mistake because I felt insanely stuffed afterwards.
We made our way afterwards the three blocks back to the waterfront. We started off on the board walk here, which was more of a regular wooden surface than some of the others we had come across. We didn't stay on it long before heading back down to the beach.
We passed a few surfers wearing wet suits and carrying their boards on their bikes. Anne asked them if the water was cold, and they didn’t reply. Pompous dick heads.

Sun setting

I walked closely between the water break and the soft sand, where it's hard packed enough to step without sinking.
The sun was starting to go down, which cast a beautiful light. To the west, it reflected on the water and the waves, and to the east it left a pink hue over the sand.
We could kind of judge where we were from the view of the buildings to the north of us. It went from business and residential to pretty much nothing but lots and parks, then more residential. There was one attractive looking building that looked almost like some sort of Russian onion dome palace.

Sun on the beach

We passed from the area of Long Beach to Lido Beach. This area was named for an Italian Villa in Venice, and set up by former NY Senator William H. Reynolds.

Lido Beach sunset

We passed a park area followed by the Lido Beach developed area of cottages and such. Just after that, it was more recreational areas immediately parallel with us. I kept turning around to watch the sun set, which was amazing.

Lido Beach sunset

Jack played his guitar as we walked, and pulled up some great songs I hadn't thought about in quite a while. One of them was the Beatles' "And Your Bird Can Sing".

Sunset

Jack played a couple others too, but I can't exactly remember what it was. I was getting pretty tired at this point. I'd left home well before the sun came up and had stayed up late the night before too.

Sunset

We talked about music, and I remember bringing up Paul McCartney and Wings' single B side from the Band on the Run (1973) era, "Country Dreamer". I was surprised Jack had never heard it, because it seems like he's heard everything at least once.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/BvBpf7e_20Q

I played the song on my phone, which actually came through alright. However, I did not realize that I was running my phone dead pretty fast. My phone lasts for up to two days if I don't use it much, but I'd been looking over maps way more than I normally would for a beach type of hike.

Last of the light

The sun set with a beautiful bright orange, and we continued into the dark, with just the bit of orange remaining on the far horizon like if everything on the edge of the world was on fire.
I watched closely for the beach access to the left to reach the Nickerson Beach parking area. I knew we were close when I saw some surf fishermen.
I soon spotted out escape point. The beach got really wide at this section, so we had to traverse the loose sand, and soon enough we reached the dark lot. I'd driven over and checked it out in the morning, so I knew where I was going.
We walked across the lots and soon got back to Anne's car, which we used to get back to the other cars. I drove it because Anne thought I'd be better at doing it than giving directions. My contact lenses were popping off pretty bad from the sea breeze on my face all day, but I managed.
I didn't want to drive home. It was over three hours one way from where I was. I'd been up and experienced a full day on Long Island, sun up to sun down. I'd have maybe gone for dinner or something if people wanted to, but we'd already eaten. Red Sean was supposed to come, but ended up showing up the day before by mistake.
There was no good reason for me to stay, so I made my way from the back woods parking lot toward the expressway. I spotted a CVS and went in to get an Arizona RX energy drink to get me through the drive home.
The highways were horrible; full of potholes and constantly drivers stopping in the middle of lanes in a panic. The signs are horrible and often don't show exactly where to go. I found myself laying on the horn like the other annoying New Yorkers to remind these people they had to move.

:(

I thought to myself how lucky we are to live in New Jersey; truthfully, our highways are actually pretty well maintained and signage is pretty good. Jughandles eliminate major traffic hazards, which I further realized when I almost got clocked crossing one. My stress level was high heading back to get across the Verrazano Narrows. Even Staten Island had confusing signs that'd point me the wrong way.

I had to pull over for a bit on my way home. It was just too tiring and my eyes hurt, even though I was only a short ways away. I also didn't want to go home and have to deal with responsibilities. It was going to be a long week.