Smith Point Bridge

Smith Point Bridge
Smith Point Bridge
	The Smith Point Bridge looking south towards Smith Point County Park.
Coordinates	40°44′18″N72°52′05″W / 40.73833°N 72.86806°W
Carries	2 lanes of CR 46 ; William Floyd Parkway
Crosses	Narrow Bay
Locale	Shirley, New York, USA
Maintained by	Suffolk County Department of Public Works
ID number	1058770
Characteristics
Design	Bascule drawbridge
Material	Steel
Total length	1,216 feet (371 m)
Width	28 feet (8.5 m)
Load limit	29 (5 on span, 24 approach)
Clearance above	22 feet (6.7 m)
History
Construction cost	$2,500,000 (1960 USD)
Opened	July 4, 1959
Statistics
Toll	Free
Location
References

Last updated February 16, 2024

The Smith Point Bridge is a steel bascule drawbridge in Shirley, New York that connects Long Island to Fire Island. Located on the south shore of central Suffolk County, the bridge carries William Floyd Parkway (Suffolk CR 46) across The Narrows between Bellport Bay (an arm of the Great South Bay) and Moriches Bay. It connects Long Island with Smith Point County Park and the Otis Pike Fire Island High Dune Wilderness, both are a part of the Fire Island National Seashore.

History

The bridge derives its name from Smith Point, a peninsula on the Long Island mainland extending into Bellport Bay. Smith Point was in turn named for William "Tangier" Smith, who in the 17th century owned 50 miles of ocean front property in Manor St. George.

In 1916, Fredrick J. Quimby paid for construction of the first Tangier Bridge at Smith Point. It was a wooden footbridge with an engine driven drawbridge. It replaced boat access to Tangier Manor and Quimby's oceanfront development, intended to be a resort town to compete with Atlantic City. Early in 1917, 200 feet in the center of the bridge, including the bascule draw and all its machinery, was destroyed by an ice jam. Subsequent winter storms continued to ravage the remains of the bridge. The few subsequent wooden bridges built to varying degrees of stability over the years were all destroyed by winter ice floes.^{[ citation needed ]}

In 1926, caravans of camels and horses passed over the bridge for the filming of The Son of the Sheik starring Rudolf Valentino and Vilma Banky.^{[ citation needed ]}

The last wooden footbridge washed away in 1927, and no new bridges were constructed for another 32 years.^{[ citation needed ]}

In summer 1955, the Shirley-Mastic Chamber of Commerce broke ground and invited 12,000 people to initiate the building of the new Smith Point Bridge to Fire Island. The bridge opened on July 4, 1959. The bridge that spans one-quarter mile represented the first step by Suffolk County to preserve 810 miles of shore frontage for public purposes. The bridge project was the development of Smith Point County Park, with a beach frontage of 6,000 feet along the eastern side of Fire Island Barrier Island on Atlantic Ocean. The park includes bathing and camping facilities. The entire structure was built on concrete piles, with a reinforced concrete roadway laid on a steel beam superstructure.

Structural Specifications

Type of bridge: - Steel-deck bascule bridge (drawbridge)
Construction started: July 16, 1955
Opened to traffic: - July 4, 1959
Length of bascule draw span: - 80 feet (24 m)
Total length of bridge: - 1,216 feet (371 m)
Width of bridge: - 28 feet (8.5 m)
Number of traffic lanes: - 2 lanes
Width of roadway: - 22 feet (6.7 m)
Clearance at center above mean high water: - 22 feet (6.7 m)
Cost of original structure (including approaches): - $2,500,000

Replacement

The Suffolk County Legislature approved $73 million in funding for a new bridge on Tuesday, June 11, 2019. The new bridge is expected to have a 75- to 100-year life span.^{[ citation needed ]} The bridge will not be a drawbridge, but will be built with a 55 ft (17 m) vertical clearance above the high water mark. The bridge will also have wider shoulders and sidewalks to better accommodate pedestrian traffic. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2021, and should take two years to complete. The federal government is funding 80 percent of the project's cost, with the county share, 20 percent, a release said.^[3]

Related Research Articles

Suffolk County is the easternmost county in the U.S. state of New York. It comprises the eastern two-thirds of Long Island, bordered to its west by Nassau County, to its east by Gardiners Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, to its north by Long Island Sound, and to its south by Great South Bay.

Mastic is a hamlet and a census-designated place (CDP) in the southeastern part of the town of Brookhaven in central Suffolk County, New York, United States. The population was 15,481 at the 2010 census.

Shirley is a hamlet in Suffolk County, New York, United States. At the 2010 census, the population of Shirley was 27,854. Shirley is the western terminus of Atlantic Crossing 1, a major submarine telecommunications cable linking the United States with the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands. Soon, the Emerald Express transatlantic communications cable will provide data connectivity between Europe and North America, landing in Shirley.

Brookhaven, formally the Town of Brookhaven, is a large suburban town in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. With a population of 488,497 as of 2022, it is the second most populous town in the United States and in New York and the third most populous community in the state.

The Great South Bay is a lagoon situated between Long Island and Fire Island, in the State of New York. It is about 45 miles (72 km) long and has an average depth of 4 feet 3 inches (1.3 m) and is 20 feet (6.1 m) at its deepest. It is protected from the Atlantic Ocean by Fire Island, a barrier island, as well as the eastern end of Jones Beach Island and Captree Island.

The Robert Moses Causeway is an 8.10-mile-long (13.04 km) parkway in Suffolk County, New York on Long Island. It is named for the master builder and urban planner Robert Moses. The parkway, originally known as the Captree Causeway, connects West Islip on Long Island to the barrier beach islands, such as Captree Island, Jones Beach Island, and the western tip of Fire Island, to the south. It is designated New York State Route 908J (NY 908J), an unsigned reference route.

Fire Island National Seashore (FINS) is a United States National Seashore that protects a 26-mile (42 km) section of Fire Island, an approximately 30-mile (48 km) long and 0.5-mile (0.80 km) wide barrier island separated from Long Island by the Great South Bay. The island is part of New York State's Suffolk County and the Outer Barrier.

Montauk Highway is an east–west road extending for 95 miles (153 km) across the southern shore of Long Island in Suffolk County, New York, in the United States. It extends from the Nassau County line in Amityville, where it connects to Merrick Road, to Montauk Point State Park at the very eastern end of Long Island in Montauk. The highway is known by several designations along its routing, primarily New York State Route 27A (NY 27A) from the county line to Oakdale and NY 27 east of Southampton. The portion of Montauk Highway between Oakdale and Southampton is mostly county-maintained as County Route 80 and County Route 85.

Smith Point County Park is a beachfront park facing the Atlantic Ocean on the east end of Fire Island, along the central south shore of Long Island, near Shirley, New York, United States. It is the largest park owned by Suffolk County.

The South Shore of Long Island, in the U.S. state of New York, is the area along Long Island's Atlantic Ocean shoreline.

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County Route 46 (CR 46) is a major county road in eastern Suffolk County, New York, in the United States. It runs south-to-north from CR 75 in Smith Point County Park to New York State Route 25A (NY 25A) near the border of Shoreham and Wading River. The road is known as the William Floyd Parkway along its entire length, and is named after William Floyd, a Long Island native and a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence. Despite its "parkway" designation within the State of New York, the road is open to commercial vehicles.

The George and Cynthia Mitchell Memorial Causeway is a set of causeways in Galveston, Texas, United States. Two of the routes carry the southbound and northbound traffic of Interstate 45, while the original causeway is restricted to rail traffic. It is the main roadway access point to Galveston Island. The second access point is Bolivar Ferry.

William "Tangier" Smith was a governor of Tangier, on the coast of Morocco, and an early settler of New York who owned more than 50 miles (80 km) of Atlantic Ocean waterfront property in central Long Island in New York State, in what is called the Manor of St. George. In 1701, he was Acting Governor of New York.

In 1938, after the destruction to Fire Island from the Long Island Express hurricane, Robert Moses and W. Earle Andrews, both part of the Long Island State Park Commission, proposed reconstruction of the island. This proposal included an extension of the Ocean Parkway out from its terminus at Captree State Park across Fire Island to Westhampton. This new parkway, which would boast 22 feet (6.7 m) wide roadways, would have connections back to the mainland at Smith Point County Park and Ponquogue with parkway spurs across Shinnecock Bay and the Great South Bay. The new spur at Ponquogue, deemed the Ponquogue Parkway, would have marked the eastern terminus of the new Ocean Parkway extension. The proposal lived until the cut-back to Smith Point County Park in 1962 for environmental issues with such a construction, ending any proposal for a parkway in the area of Hampton Bays.

The San Leandro Bay Bridge, better known as the Bay Farm Island Bridge, is a single-leaf bascule drawbridge spanning the San Leandro Channel, the inlet of San Leandro Bay within the San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States. It carries California State Route 61 and links the main island of Alameda with Bay Farm Island within the city of Alameda. The present bridge was completed in 1953; it is paralleled by a second bridge devoted to pedestrian and bicycle traffic, the Bay Farm Island Bicycle Bridge.

References

↑ "Structure No. 1058770". United States Department of Transportation . Nationalbridges.com. 2011. Retrieved December 28, 2012.
↑ Porterfield, Byron (June 4, 1964). "$10 Million Fire Island Bridge To Be Opened to Public June 13". The New York Times . p. 39. Retrieved 2010-04-11.
↑ Finn, Lisa (2018-08-24). "All Systems Go For Smith Point Bridge Replacement". Shirley-Mastic, NY Patch. Retrieved 2020-06-26.

External links

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[bridge_design-1] "Structure No. 1058770". United States Department of Transportation . Nationalbridges.com. 2011. Retrieved December 28, 2012.

[newbridge-2] Porterfield, Byron (June 4, 1964). "$10 Million Fire Island Bridge To Be Opened to Public June 13". The New York Times . p. 39. Retrieved 2010-04-11.

[3] Finn, Lisa (2018-08-24). "All Systems Go For Smith Point Bridge Replacement". Shirley-Mastic, NY Patch. Retrieved 2020-06-26.

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