ARTHURKILL
1.Pralls
2.Shooters
3.IsleofMeadows
LOWERBAY
4.Hoffman
5.Swinburne
UPPERBAY
6.Liberty
7.Ellis
8.Governors
JAMAICABAY
9.White
10.Barren
11.RuffleBar
12.LittleEggMarsh
13.BigEggMarsh
14.YellowBar
15.SilverHoleMarsh
EASTRIVER
16.UThant
(Belmont)17.Roosevelt
18.MillRock
19.HeelTapRock
20.Randalls
21.NorthBrother
22.SouthBrother
23.Rikers
LONGISLAND
SOUND
24.CubanLedge
25.City
26.High
27.ChimneySweeps
28.Columbia
29.Pea
30.Nonations
31.Hart
32.Rat
33.Twin
34.Hunter
35.Hog
36.TwoTree
37.TheBlauzes
38.DannyHat
39.MachauxRockTHENEWYORK
ARCHIPELAGO15(^1011)
12
13
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9
6
8
17
(^1819)
21
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30
31
burned down the quarantine facilities in
Tompkinsville that housed newly arrived
immigrants sick with yellow fever and
smallpox—too close, the Staten Islanders
thought, to their homes. “The Staten
Islanders, to a man, have all endorsed the
arson,” wrote the New York correspondent
for the San FranciscoBulletin.
The quarantines would mark the begin-
ning of a decades-long push to restrict the
flow of immigrants, first by their health,
then by country of origin, an effort for
which the outermost islands often served
as a first defense. “There is no other gate to
the nation’s greatest port,” a Wichita cor-
respondent wrote of Hoffman and Swin-
burne in 1910. By the middle of the 1920s,
the passage of the Emergency Quota Act
and the National Origins Act had so lim-
ited immigration as to make the quaran-
tines unnecessary.
22
29
34
3638 35 39
37
28
33
26
7
20 23
marsh-killing reed, is nosing in, and then,
in a maybe more complicated way, cotton-
wood has arrived. Cottonwood is a native
species, but in a manmade native grassland,
cottonwoods displace the grass that attracts
the birds. To keep the island a migratory-
bird layover might mean cutting native
trees. We’re taught to see the line between
native and invasive species as clearly delin-
eated, but the history of the islands can test
those definitions.
Turn the boat back into Rockaway Inlet,
enter the Lower Bay just past Coney
Island, and in front of you are Hoffman
and Swinburne, in the Lower Bay waters
off the shore of Staten Island, islands con-
structed not to attract natives but to isolate
so-called foreigners. Easily viewable from
the long pier on Staten Island’s South
Beach, they were built from scratch in the
1860s after Staten Island residents
K
IL
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A
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THUR
EAS
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R
IV
E
R
2
16
27
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(continued on page 37)