On 26 Apr 01, having been told that the posts were gone from the Fairhaven property, I went back and looked; they are still there but a chain-link fence now separates them from Vanderbilt Drive. I had not shot the N end of VD, which I thought was the S end of the bridge over the LIRR Main Line; here is that N end plus the posts, now on the E side of the fence (looking N):
* - see LIMP RR Bridges Page.
Nothing shows on the south side behind another of those ubiquitous chain-link fances. Now the Parkway runs through heavily populated Garden City, between Russell Road to the west and Pell Terrace to the east and crossed Clinton Street between Pell and Kingsbury Road on a high bridge noted elsewhere as the one from which George Dade and his family looked northeasterly at their new home at Roosevelt Field. Not much left there now except the eastern embankment viewed from across Clinton (view NE), the embankment up close (view SE), the broken edge of the remaining pavement (view ESE from half-way up), and one of many posts up top, on the north side, in about 100 yards east (view WNW, note the elongated opening for split rails instead of twisted ribbon wire - see LIMP Posts
Up topside, there are many more posts and features to see, especially strolling easterly down the gentle grade back to ground level NW of the grade school playing fields and Raymond Court. There is another post, about 110 yards east (view ENE), a masonry barricade once erected across the RoW about 200 yards east but now missing most of its southern half (view NW), and split rails still (if original?) in place in posts on the south side (about 110 and 120 yards east, views SE and SW):
[On 31 May 02, I walked all the way in from Raymond Court and here are the remnants of that wall, looking WNW:
You can barely make out the General Manager's house in the distance, through the foliage. ]
Then a close-up picture of the west edge of the pavement on top (view SE), the RoW about 120 yards E (view SE) with split rails in place and the playing fields in the distance over the back yard of the house just to south, the original concrete margin or road edge (not a raised curb) on the north side about 20 to 30 yards in to the east (view NW), and a view from the west side of Clinton Street looking directly into Vanderbilt Court (formerly Huntington Road on the 1967 Nassau Hagstrom's), the site of the Garden City Toll House now moved to downtown Garden City to serve as the office of the Garden City Historical Society:
Going south on Clinton Street, turning left on Stewart Avenue past Raymond Court (see the previous page) and into the Roosevelt Field Shopping Mall, where the south marginal road is or flanks where the RoW went easterly and continuing off the marginal road across the east access road (northern continuation of Quentin Roosevelt Boulevard) to the east, where it dead ends as South Street in an industrial area (at what is or was a Civil Air Patrol facility), there was no trace of the LIMP RoW visible.
[As long as I was at Quentin Roosevelt Boulevard, I digressed at this point to visit LIRR Steam Locomotive #35, disassembled prior to moving up to a new museum planned for Oyster Bay.]
The RoW runs due east through industrial back yards and completely resurfaced areas at Meadowbrook State Parkway and Avenue C (now the southern extension of Ellison Avenue) until it crosses Merrick (Post) Avenue just north of Stewart Avenue (no trace anywhere that I could find) and enters Eisenhower (Salisbury) Park (again without evidence).
[Before continuing, I digressed yet again to visit the site of an old LIRR Central Branch/Meadowbrook Spur bridge inside a loop of the Meadowbrook Parkway/Stewart Avenue cloverleaf and then the decayed wreckage of the famed Meadowbrook Club and Meadowbrook Station on the west side of Merrick (Post) Avenue just south of Stewart Avenue; much more detail and history, with photos, is on my LIRR Continuation Page 4.]
The north end of Eisenhower Park is so totally landscaped and heavily wooded that it is not at all evident what happened to the RoW. The path along the south side of the fence along Salisbury Park Drive, however, is almost certainly the old LIMP; it picks up where the Drive turns eastward from southward and runs right out to the N-S fence at Carman Avenue. Heavily developed land runs south of the Drive from there east to the Wantagh State Parkway; crossing the Parkway yields a gold mine! On either side of the eastern end of Salisbury Park Drive East, between the WSP and Grace Lane, just west of Newbridge Raod, we find split-rail fences in concrete posts; first we are looking WNW at the eastern end of the rails on the north side of the Drive about 100 yards east of the WSP, just west of Grace Lane, then WNW at the western end of the fence line just east of the WSP, then crossing the Drive and looking WSW at the western end of the south fence just west of the WSP bridge and then ESE at the eastern end of the fencing across from Grace Lane:
Now comes the boring part, meandering along easterly through east central Nassau County in Levittown and Plainedge, where the RoW alternates between just that, a right-of-way from the LIPA (LILCo) power lines and a greensward used as parkland by the locals, crossing Gardiners (Cattle) Avenue, Wantagh Avenue, Massapequa-Hicksville Road, and yet another Stewart Avenue with nary a trace of the old Parkway. Here is a typical view, looking eastward from the crossing of today's Hilltop Road, slightly less than half-way between Newbridge Road and Jerusalem Avenue (both running southerly out of Hicksville).
However, there IS one bright spot, the site of the grandstand (on Page 5).
O.K., things perk up mightily again at this point; in the area of South and North Hermann Avenue and Sophia Street. First, I picked up the trace at South Hermann Avenue, parking and hopping the fence and hiking eastward into rough woodland just west of the Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway (originally the Wantagh-Oyster Bay Expressway). This area is laced with trails but the old pavement is quite evident and can be followed readily. The heavily-banked LH (E-to-N) curve IS Dead Man's Curve, which is NOT in Bethpage State Park (about which more later), ENE of the north end of South Hermann Avenue, and was shot facing south (WB) at the south end of one of the LIMP's most abrupt zig-zags. Next, we have turned around 180° and are looking due north, just east of Sophia Street, alongside the west edge of the SOB toward the heavily banked RH curve heading east and across what is now the SOB, construction of which obliterated a good bit of the LIMP RoW there.
Crossing the SOB, the RoW now runs northeasterly across Central Avenue immediately east of today's Parma Drive (west to today's Seaford-Oyster Bay Expressway/I-135 - the berm is still there on the S side of Central) and then across the LIRR tracks. There really isn't anything at all to see there, although there is an embankment of the east side of Parma Drive south of Central Avenue which I climbed; it is featureless, devoid of anything of note, overgrown, and not at all photogenic. On the other (northeast) side of the tracks, in the triangle between the SOB to the west and Plainview Road to the east, with Thorne Drive to the south, just above Central, I saw no trace of the LIMP but wasn't terribly diligent nor on foot; perhaps I'd better go back and walk around a bit. Probably the southern half of Stymus Avenue and Manchester Drive were the RoW just prior to crossing where Powell Avenue eastbound out of Bethpage village becomes Plainview Road. At this point the RoW enters Bethpage State Park.
(12 Apr 05)
Going north in Bethpage State Park from the Plainview Road gate, the paved footpath to the left (west) is almost certainly the RoW. However, about 500 yards north, the sharp right bend to the northeast, which is now definitely known NOT to be Dead Man's Curve, is flat as a pancake! [If you go in there, you must park in the parking lot; do NOT leave your car anywhere else as the State Parkway troopers are obliged to nail you and will (I asked).] I really didn't know what to make of what happened next. I parked at the Northeast lot off Plainview road and walked southeast a short distance to the RoW The RoW is immediately south of the LIPA high-tension lines, not under them. Following the paved RoW northeasterly a few hundred yards brought me to a fork; the paved portion went north-northeasterly while the LIPA lines went easterly! Being an intrepid (and obstinate) soul, I followed the paving another few hundred yards to where it stopped dead at another fork, continued north-northeasterly on a dirt Jeep trail, and ended up at a narrow animal trail through dense, high grass, probably 'way up near South Park Drive and Jo Ann Drive, where I gave up and backtracked to the first fork. The first photo here is of the original pavement in rather good condition east of the parking lot with a broad left sweep to the northeast (view ENE). The second is at the first fork, with the paving continuing straight (N) and a dirt path going off to the right (E) under the wires (view NE). The last is of the end of pavement on the northbound leg (at left) and another dirt trail off to the right (E) (view NE).
Following the dirt paths to the east under the high-tension lines ended me up on the north end of the northeast links where the lines went off to the east and the path abruptly became another animal track through more dense, high grass (I quit).
I had no idea where the RoW exits BSP; it is at Schoolhouse Lane and it crosses Round Swamp Road north of the firehouse (where the berm remains), and continues easterly a short distance through Battle Row Campground and crossed Bethpage-Spagnoli Road (also known as Bethpage-Sweet Hollow Road at that eastern end) where Claremont Road and Winding Road all intersect. The southern (maintenance) gate into Old Bethpage Village Restoration is a short distance west of the RoW, as detailed on my LIMP Page 7, NOT north up Winding Road and the dead end of Swan Court, as previously surmised here.
(12 Apr 05)
I went around the OBVR on this trip and went back on 01 Oct 99; see the OBVR section (on the preceding page for space conservation) for that area.
My 1967 Nassau Hagstrom's clearly delineates the LIMP from there on as the southeastern boundary of the OBVR, showing it crossing the Suffolk County line 400 yards north of Bethpage-Sweet Hollow Road (now Bethpage-Spagnoli Road). The RoW woggles drunkenly a few hundred yards easterly on a ridge north of what is now the model flying field and sand pits north of Spagnoli and crosses Route 110 (Broad Hollow/Sweet Hollow Road - {take your pick}. The LIPA lines run along the high ridge south of there which we saw from the Restoration dump and are shown in the next two photos, viewed from my car on the south side of Spagnoli (view SW, {note the "Wrag-Time" truck in rear-view mirror}) and from a Keyspan Energy (ex-LILCo) facility parking lot on the north side of Spagnoli ~¼-mile west of 110 (view SE).
On the east side of Route 110 is a jumble of newer construction and then a LIPA switching station on the north side of Ruland Road. East of that, things perk up again, because we come to the Melville/Farmingdale Maxess Road area between Ruland and Duryea Roads and the Maxess Road crossing bridge near where I used to work for ultrasonics manufacturer Heat Systems (now Misonix Incorporated) on New Highway.
I had no idea what road the bridge at the northeast corner of Ruland
and Maxess carried over the LIMP, although Maxess itself (in an earlier
incarnation and alignment) seemed a good possibility. Whatever, there
are the abutments of a long-gone bridge standing just east of Maxess, just N
of Ruland, and just south of a stub dead-end street the name of which I
completely forgot to note. There is no parking in the area so a little
creative "visiting" is helpful. The bridge was aligned NNW-SSE over a
LIMP RoW aligned (logically enough) WSW-ENE. it turns out to have
been a footbridge!
(04 Nov 04)
Maxess/Duryea Road area and bridge material moved to Continuation Page 4.
Beyond the Maxess Road bridge, the RoW crosses Ruland Road going east-southeast, then gets lost in another welter of roads at the intersection of Baylis, Duryea, Ruland, Colonial Spring, and Pinelawn Roads and Wellwood Avenue.
I was going to continue beyond the Wellwood Avenue/Pinelawn Road crossing on the next trip but I thought I'd quit here and let some Suffolk aficionado carry this forward. Suffice it that I did continue; see my Wheatley Heights/Half Hollow Hills Area section on LIMP Page 7. I was all wet on where the RoW goes through that place, but it ran through yet another welter of small roads in that area until it came to the intersection of today's Colonial Springs Road, Bagatelle Road and the Long Island Expressway which is about where the RoW headed northeast to where it hit Half Hollow Road ( see my LIMP Tour Page for how the LIMP gets to Ronkonkoma.
Because the Main Page overloaded, please visit the many Continuation Pages noted on the LIMP Index page.
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S. Berliner, III
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2003, 2004,
2005
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