Stony Brook University Libraries recently received a donation of historic documents showcasing the battle behind the creation of the Fire Island National Seashore (FINS) — just in time for the national seashore’s 60th anniversary.
The documents reveal the history of the Citizens Committee for a Fire Island National Seashore, a grassroots campaign that fought to create FINS and oppose a plan for a highway to be created on Fire Island. The plan was led by Robert Moses, a former urban planner who is widely considered to be one of the most powerful and controversial individuals in New York’s history.
The documents were donated by the Barbash family. Maurice Barbash and his brother-in-law, Irving Like, led the committee’s efforts. When a severe storm caused widespread damage on Fire Island in March 1962, Moses used the opportunity to push for the construction of a highway, saying it would stop further erosion of the island.
“Well, this was not true,” Cathy Barbash, Maurice’s daughter, said. “In fact, the committee found evidence that he had built the Ocean Parkway into Jones Beach along Captree Island. And in fact, they had to keep shoring that up, the road did not stabilize the beach.”
Cathy Barbash explained that her uncle, wanting to give the community something else to fight for other than stopping the construction of the highway, went to Washington, D.C. and found research in the archives of the capitol that led to the committee establishing their end goal.
“The [United States] government had done a study of potential national parks to add to the system, and especially on the east coast and on the shoreline,” she said. “And Fire Island had been named one of them, so that gave them something to fight for, as opposed to just fighting against the road.”
The archives the Barbash family donated to Stony Brook provide primary source documentation for academics and preserve a part of Long Island’s history.
“Accepting the collection is really about preserving the history of Long Island, ensuring that our researchers have access to these primary source documents so they can make their own interpretation based on the original documents,” Jamie Saragossi, the associate dean of content services for Stony Brook University Libraries, said. “And I think it’s really important for Stony Brook, being kind of a pillar of the community here, to be able to provide access.”
The donated documents include press releases, newspaper articles, meeting minutes and correspondence between committee members and elected officials.
In one document, a news bulletin of the Fire Island Voters Association dated Sept. 12, 1962, urged members to write to different politicians about their desire to protect Fire Island’s seashore. That same news bulletin also urges community members to financially contribute to the efforts to establish FINS.
Another document is a statement from Carl Buchheister, the former president of the National Audubon Society. In the statement, Buchheister advocates for the preservation of Fire Island, citing the importance of maintaining an untouched seashore.
“We applaud Jones Beach but we earnestly hope the park authorities of Long Island and the State of New York do not push a good thing too far,” Buchheister wrote in the statement. “Fire Island should not be split and dominated from end to end by a four-lane through highway inviting mass traffic.”
On July 10, 1962, a public hearing regarding the proposed highway was packed with protestors. Even Moses was present until a letter was read aloud that compared him to Adolf Hitler. He walked out of the meeting shortly after.
In 1963, Moses stepped down from his position as the Long Island State Parks Commissioner; with him no longer in the position, the plan for the highway died. But the committee wasn’t finished — they wanted to establish a national seashore on Fire Island.
Stewart Udall, who, at the time, was U.S. Secretary of the Interior, supported the environmental movement of the 1960s. This era saw a shift in the public’s consciousness regarding environmental protections and saw the signing of landmark legislation, such as the Wilderness Act of 1964 and the establishment of Earth Day in 1970.
Udall helped push the federal government toward expanding federal lands across both the western and eastern halves of the country, including east coast urban population centers.
On Sept. 11, 1964, Public Law 88-587 was passed by Congress and signed by former President Lyndon B. Johnson, officially establishing FINS and giving Long Island its first and only national seashore.
Now, the original documentation chronicling FINS’ history will be preserved and made available for viewing through the Stony Brook University Libraries.
Kristen Nyitray, the director of special collections and University archives, and university archivist at Stony Brook University Libraries, said that after taking the necessary steps, all the documents donated would be scanned and made available digitally on a webpage.
“What we do is embark on a process of archivally processing them,” she said. “So, for example, if the collection is not in order, we can put it in order so it’s more intuitive for researcher use. But the ideal is to keep in it the order of how the creator organized the papers.”
After the documents are organized, the University Libraries will create a finding aid, which will serve as a guide for the collection and an inventory that will keep track of all the documents donated.
“Part of this Fire Island collection is where [we] will also digitize the collection, so it will become accessible through our web page,” Nyitray said.
The documents chronicling the founding of FINS will join Like’s papers that are already in possession of the Stony Brook University Libraries.
Cathy Barbash said that this fact, combined with the University’s location in Suffolk County, N.Y., solidified the family’s decision to donate the documents to the University.
“Someone studying this campaign would have both resources in the same place for ease of research,” she said. “I thought that was important so they wouldn’t have to go somewhere else to find my father’s papers when they were both working on the same thing together.”
Correction Statement: The previous edition said Like was Barbash’s brother. It has since been corrected to say brother-in-law.
