Toyandgadgetguy

Most Long Islanders know what Robert Moses beaches are, but how many of you know of a time before that park system existed? That’s right… before those wonderful bridges and causeways were built to carry millions of beach goers to our wonderful shores every year… people still enjoyed going to the beach. The question is: How did they get there, and what did they do when they arrived? Well, sit back and I’ll tell you the tale of a once prosperous little community called High Hill Beach over in Nassau County.
High Hill Beach once resided in the sandy dunes and flat beaches just east of what is now Zach’s Bay, named after Zachariah James of Seaford. “Where’s Zach’s Bay?” you might ask, but you know it well enough. It’s that little bay where the Jones Beach Theater now sits. It wasn’t always a bay. Once upon a time, it was known a Zack’s inlet, and connected the beach to the Atlantic Ocean. The bay has a history all it’s own, but that’s another story for another time. If you stand on the west shoreline of Zach’s Bay and look east, you can see the where the private community of High Hill Beach once stood. It stretched from the bay to the ocean, across the land where the Ocean Parkway now runs.
Now, this little colony of nearly 100 buildings in all could only be reached by boat or ferry. The ferries ran out of Bellmore and Seaford and a round trip ticket would cost 40 cents. Ok, so 40 cents may not seem like much to you, but back over 100 years ago, it was a bit more than disposeable income for most. Around 1900, there was a hotel built on the beach, and about 17 years later, it was sold, becoming “Savages Hotel and Casino”. There was also “The Breakers”, which was a guesthouse. High Hill beach also had a post office and you can see the postmark on postcards all over the internet. There were planked boardwalks that connected the various areas of the community. From the ocean to the bay and from the general store to the hotels, you went everywhere on foot over these wooden walkways.
Residents would summer on the beach, and winter back on the main island. Most of the residents came from Bellmore, Wantagh and Seaford, but there was the occasional resident from the boroughs of Manhattan. During the summer, ferries came and went a few times a day, so the fathers could work on the “mainland” during the day, and stay on the beach for the night. Some of the further working men would come to stay for the weekends. During the week, High Hill was a woman and child paradise. There was so much to do; from baseball and swimming to exploring the beach and having a soda pop in the pavillion. Sure, there was no television, electricity or indoor plumbing, but reading about people’s recollections… nobody seemed to mind.
High Hill Beach was in it’s heyday during the era of prohibition. “Rumrunner” boats often made their midnight runs from the ships offshore to Long Island. The Coast Guard patrols would often give chase to these rumrunners, resulting in the contraband being dumped from the boat during the chase. Containers of illegal alcohol would often was ashore on the beach on summer mornings. The weekends at High Hill Beach were particularly wild. Alcohol was illegal, but somehow, there was always drinking and a party at High Hill Beach on a weekend.
When Jones Beach opened in 1929, it signaled the end of High Hill Beach. When Robert Moses saw his vision of Jones Beach, it didn’t include this little beachfront community of bungalows. There was some questionable re-zoning of the community from the “anti-Moses” town of Oyster Bay to the “pro-Moses” town of Hempstead shortly before the new park was constructed. Moses gave the people of High Hill Beach until 1940 to relocate. Citizens were given the choice to move, or have their houses burned. In the end, around 1939-40, roughly 60 homes remained, and had to be relocated by barge and truck. Today, most of these homes still stand in West Gilgo Beach.


Photos/scans from the collections of:

Mark Murray
and
Carol Starcke Giannattasio
with digital pics from
Me.