Large untouched forests still survived in suburban Long Island in the 1930s

Evidence

Through the train windows, he had glimpsed in the woods that lay between Merrick and Freeport a small pond. When he got into those woods on foot, he found the pond, but, beyond it, he could see another gleam of water. Reaching that, he found a larger pond and, beyond it, another gleam. Beyond that, there was another. There were four ponds, linked by a stream that ran due north, and each was larger than the one before. Lilies floated in them. Pickerel and trout flickered beneath the pads. Huge oaks, beeches, birches and pines surrounded him. And as he tramped steadily north, there seemed no end to them. He was not in a small woods, he realized, but in a forest—it would survey out at more than seven hundred acres—that lay untouched in the heart of Nassau County. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 703

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: In 1920 Long Island’s undeveloped east held one person per four acres — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 639