Lonelyville, New York
Encyclopedia
Fire Island, New York
Fire Island is one of the outer barrier islands adjacent to the south shore of Long Island, New York. It is approximately long and varies between broad. Fire Island is part of Suffolk County. It comprises a number of hamlets, census-designated places , and villages, all of which lie within the...
in the town of Islip
Islip (town), New York
The Town of Islip is one of ten towns in Suffolk County, New York . Located on the south shore of Long Island, the town population was 322,612 at the 2000 census. The smaller, unincorporated hamlet of Islip lies within the town.-Demographics:...
in Suffolk County
Suffolk County, New York
Suffolk County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York on the eastern portion of Long Island. As of the 2010 census, the population was 1,493,350. It was named for the county of Suffolk in England, from which its earliest settlers came...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Lonelyville has approximately 60 houses and is located between Dunewood and Atlantique. The closest ferry service is from Dunewood. There are no stores or facilities but it is a fairly easy walk or bike ride to Fair Harbor which serves as a town center for the community. The majority of the houses are not winterized and consequently there are only a handful of year-round residents. Probably the most famous, past, residents of Lonelyville were Mel Brooks and his wife Anne Bancroft who had an ocean front house there for many years. Brooks purportedly wrote many of his movies and comedy sketches there.
History
It is unclear when and why Lonelyville earned its name. However it appears that the name was already in use by the 1880s when Captain Selah Clock built a four hundred foot pier into the ocean and established the Fire Island Fishing Company there. The idea of the venture was to unload fish from commercial fishing boats, along with fish caught with the use of large fishing nets which were strung out some 1600 feet from the pier and reeled in daily. The catch would then be loaded onto a small railroad system and then run across the island to another pier on the bayside. The fish would then be loaded into other boats and then sailed to the mainland. This avoided the long and tricky passage through Fire Island Inlet thus saving countless travel hours for the fishermen. The pier remained standing long after Captain Clock’s fishing company shut down and became somewhat of a landmark for that part of Fire Island. The Hurricane of 1938 finally took what remained of the slowly deteriorating pier.As recently as August 2008, footings for the pier could be seen about 100 feet off the shore and submerged 20 feet under water.