Jamaica Bay

American Airlines Flight 1 was a domestic, scheduled passenger flight from New York International (Idlewild) Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport) to Los Angeles International Airport. On March 1, 1962, the Boeing 707 rolled over and crashed into Jamaica Bay two minutes after takeoff, killing all 87 passengers and eight crew members aboard. A Civil Aeronautics Board investigation determined that a manufacturing defect in the autopilot system led to an uncommanded rudder control system input, causing the accident. A number of notable people died in the crash. It was the fifth fatal Boeing 707 accident, and at the time, the deadliest.

Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge is a wildlife refuge in New York City managed by the National Park Service as part of Gateway National Recreation Area. It is composed of the open water and intertidal salt marshes of Jamaica Bay. It lies entirely within the boundaries of New York City, divided between the boroughs of Brooklyn to the west and Queens to the east.

The Raunt was a former Long Island Rail Road station on the Rockaway Beach Branch. It had no address and no station house, because it was meant strictly as a dropping-off point for fishermen using a small island in Jamaica Bay. The station was located 1,300 feet (400 m) west of signal station "ER" (presumably #96), and near the WU Tower. It was named for the channel on the south side of the island where it stood.

Ruffle Bar is a 143-acre (58 ha) island located in Jamaica Bay in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City, off the coast of Canarsie. The island is part of the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, and lies just east of the former Barren Island, where Floyd Bennett Field is now located. One of the early inhabitants of Ruffle Bar was Jacob Skidmore, who built a house on the island. In 1842, Skidmore moved his house and family to Barren Island.: 14  Skidmore had disassembled his house piece-by-piece. According to one story, a storm blew his disassembled ceiling across the bay to Barren Island.During the Civil War, Ruffle Bar became a stop for ferries traveling between Canarsie and Rockaway. The Windward Club started sponsoring boat racing around Ruffle Bar in the 1880s. By the next decade, a hotel on the island had opened. Ruffle Bar was considered to be part of the public land of the town of Flatbush until the 1890s, when parts of the island were sold to 24 private owners.: 59 Ruffle Bar was so isolated that when Jamaica Bay froze during the winter, the island's few residents were cut off from the rest of civilization for three months. One newspaper article compared the situation to isolated communities in the Arctic. Making reference to an Arctic explorer named Otto Sverdrup, the newspaper wrote, "For all that the city does for Ruffle Bar, it might as well be in Sverdrup Land."In 1913, the city proposed to build a garbage incinerator on Ruffle Bar. Brooklyn residents strongly opposed building an incinerator at this location because the smell could drift northward into Flatlands, so the incinerator was ultimately not constructed on Ruffle Bar. Pierre Noel's Ruffle Bar Association began constructing structures on Ruffle Bar in 1914, for the purpose of developing it as a resort. The association leased the city-owned portions of Ruffle Bar from the New York City Department of Docks for ten years starting in 1914.: 59  Through the 1920s, landfill was added in order to expand Ruffle Bar's area. The island became the center of a successful clam and oyster industry. At one point, there were more than 40 structures on the island that supported the industry, with most of these buildings being located on the south shore.: 59 Fishing activities ceased when the water was deemed by the New York City Department of Health to be too polluted for the breeding of shellfish. The Great Depression caused most of the residents to move elsewhere, but a few squatters remained. By 1940, there were twenty-five structures left on the island.: 59  The last resident, a fisherman, was thought to have moved away in 1944. However, The New York Times showed that Census Enumerators visited Ruffle Bar as late as 1950 to collect Census data from the remaining residents. The island is uninhabited and, along with other islands in Jamaica Bay, has been designated as a bird sanctuary. Due to its remoteness, kayakers have sometimes become stranded on the island.

Goose Creek was a former Long Island Rail Road station on the Rockaway Beach Branch. Located on the north end of the trestle across Goose Creek, it had no address and no station house, because it was meant strictly as a dropping-off point for fisherman using a small island in Jamaica Bay.The station opened in the summer of 1888 and by the following year it served a small community consisting of six fishing clubs, two saloons, and a hotel. The area was known as a popular fishing ground for weakfish and boats could be hired at the docks.The Rockaway Beach Branch was electrified on July 26, 1905. The following year, spoils from the construction of the tunnels leading to Pennsylvania Station were used to fill in the trestle across Goose Creek. The station closed in September 1935 and by 1940 all of the buildings at Goose Creek were eliminated.

The Joseph P. Addabbo Memorial Bridge (formerly the North Channel Bridge) is a bridge that carries Cross Bay Boulevard across Jamaica Bay in Queens, New York City, between Howard Beach and Broad Channel. The fixed bridge, carrying six lanes of Cross Bay Boulevard, is named for the late Joseph P. Addabbo, who represented the area in the United States House of Representatives from 1961 to 1986.The bridge was built alongside the original North Channel Bridge as a replacement; a lack of maintenance on the old bridge had allowed it to deteriorate to the point where it was beyond repair.

Broad Channel is a neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Queens. It occupies the southern portion of Rulers Bar Hassock (known colloquially as "Broad Channel Island"), the only inhabited island in Jamaica Bay. The neighborhood stands on Big Egg Marsh, an area of fill approximately 20 blocks long and 4 blocks wide at the south end of Rulers Bar Hassock. The community is an inholding within the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, managed by the U.S. National Park Service as part of the Gateway National Recreation Area. The area comprises several artificial canals separating dead-end residential blocks. It is connected to the rest of Queens by road and subway bridges. Broad Channel is located in Queens Community District 14 and its ZIP Code is 11693. It is patrolled by the New York City Police Department's 100th Precinct.

The Broad Channel station is a station on the IND Rockaway Line of the New York City Subway, located in the neighborhood of the same name at Noel and West Roads in the borough of Queens. It is served by the A train and the Rockaway Park Shuttle at all times, the latter of which originates/terminates here. Broad Channel originally opened in 1880 as a Long Island Railroad station. The LIRR discontinued service in 1950 after a fire on the trestle across Jamaica Bay, to the station's north. The station reopened June 28, 1956, as a subway station. Broad Channel is the only subway station serving the island of Broad Channel, which is located in Jamaica Bay and only has about 3,000 residents. Thus it is the second least-used in the subway as of 2019. However, this station is the only transfer point for riders traveling between Brooklyn and Manhattan (which the A train travels to) and the four other stations served by the Rockaway Park Shuttle. North of this station, there are two additional tracks within the right-of-way: a short track that allows Rockaway Park Shuttle trains to reverse direction and return to the Rockaways, and a longer track that is used to test new subway cars.

Canarsie Pol is an uninhabited island south of Canarsie, Brooklyn in Jamaica Bay, New York City. It is part of Gateway National Recreation Area. Canarsie Pol is an irregular oval of about 300 acres (120 ha) (17,050,000 square feet (1,584,000 m2)). On 1910 maps, the island was originally much smaller; however, when nearby waterways were dredged to expand them for improved navigation, the sand and soil were piled on Canarsie Pol. Near the island are other islands and marshes in the bay. Canarsie Pol has an elevation of 10 feet (3.0 m), and is a popular destination for kayakers embarking from the Canarsie Pier.

HMS Liverpool was a 28-gun Coventry-class sixth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy. Launched in 1758, she saw active service in the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War. She was wrecked in Jamaica Bay, near New York, in 1778.

Howard (also Howard's Landing) was a former Long Island Rail Road station on the Rockaway Beach Branch. Located on marshland along the coast of Jamaica Bay south of the "WD Tower" near Hawtree Creek, it had no fixed address, and was south of what is today 165th Avenue, evidently within the Gateway National Recreation Area's Hamilton Beach Park.

Spring Creek Park is a public park along the Jamaica Bay shoreline between the neighborhoods of Howard Beach, Queens, and Spring Creek, Brooklyn, in New York City. Created on landfilled former marshland,: 5  the park is mostly an undeveloped nature preserve, with only small portions accessible to the public for recreation.Spring Creek Park consists of three major parts, which surround the park's eponymous creek and several smaller waterways. Spring Creek South comprises the section on the Queens side south of the Belt Parkway, which consists mostly of a marsh and forest on the shore of the Howard Beach peninsula, surrounding the neighborhood on its western and southern sides. Spring Creek North consists of a largely fenced-off section of land north of Belt Parkway; it straddles the Brooklyn–Queens border, which runs along Spring Creek. A third section of parkland was built around the Gateway Center shopping mall, which is located north of Belt Parkway on the Brooklyn side. The southern section is part of the Gateway National Recreation Area and under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, while the northern and Gateway Center portions are managed by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. A park along Spring Creek was first proposed in 1930 by the New York Park Association's Metropolitan Conference on Parks. It was ultimately decided that the park be built upon fill, since the site mostly consisted of marshland. Spring Creek Park was approved in 1942, and land-filling operations began in 1949. Temporary landfills for waste disposal were operated at the future park site until the South Shore Incinerator along Spring Creek was completed in 1954. The southern section of Spring Creek Park was integrated into the Gateway National Recreation Area in 1974. In the 1990s, the northern section of the park was expanded via land acquisition, and in 2003, The Related Companies built extra parkland as part of Gateway Center's construction. The New York state government opened the Shirley Chisholm State Park along the Brooklyn coastline, south of the Gateway Center section of the park, in 2019.