Part 1 - In the beginning

It seems fitting that our swim history should begin where else but at the very beginning with the birth of Long Island, Fire Island and the Great South Bay. Long Island has actually only existed for a mere blink of an eye in geological terms. It took thousands of years to create and numerous natural events occurred to form the shape of Long Island, its terrain, and its environment. The top layer of Long Island we know today was made by large glaciers which existed between 60,000 and 21,000 years ago. See picture to left for what Long Island and the Great South Bay may have looked like when glaciers covered the northeast.

The first glacier, which occurred 60,000 years ago, was the Wisconsian Glacier which moved south across Canada and Northern America. It carried boulders, rocks, gravel, and soil in a frozen wall of ice hundreds of feet high which were deposited in mounds of hills stretching from Brooklyn to Montauk. About 40,000 years later the glacier advanced to almost the same position. When it began to melt, another moraine was deposited. This ridge runs from Brooklyn Heights to Orient Point.

The way in which Long Island was formed resulted in two different terrains. The North Shore contains many bays, harbors, especially in the western section. On the other hand, the South Shore was a flat outwash plain, which is now made of mainly sand and gravel and gradually slopes to the sea. From Rockaway to Montauk Point is seventy five miles of sandbars and beaches with several inlets. The difference in the island's geography was a result of only the North Shore being covered with ice.

The sediments that were deposited off the south shore of Long Island were gradually formed into what is today Fire Island by the ocean currents and created the Great South Bay. The Great South Bay is technically not a bay but is a lagoon approximately 45 miles long forming a large natural harbor. It is protected by Fire Island, a barrier island approximately 30 miles long, as well as the eastern end of Jones Beach Island. Around 1683 Fire Island Inlet broke through separating Fire Island from Jones Beach Island. The Fire Island Inlet was to grow to nine miles in width before receding and overtaking Jones Beach Island in the late 1800s to form the overlapping inlet we have today.