The Long Island Railroad Arrives...

Do you know why Long Island Avenue has that name? No, this isn't a trivia question for the owners of the late Bill Mulvihill's book on Long Island Place Names... This is a post with a few tidbits about the Long Island Railroad coming to Sag Harbor!

The Railroad came to Sag Harbor in 1870, bringing with it the kind of industry and factory work that doesn't mesh with the grassy beach front lawns from television references to the Hamptons. Those factories included the famous Fahys Watchcase Factory (later the Bulova Watchcase Factory) and everything from Bliss Torpedo Factory to Maidstone Flour Company. The railroad came in as the last whaling ships left the village.

The whaling industry experienced a crash following the Gold Rush. While a good portion of the Sag Harbor Whaling Fleet lies in San Francisco's harbors, other whalers moved on to new industries. With new technology, whale oil was no longer the valuable energy source it once was.

Bringing the Long Island Railroad to Sag Harbor as industries collapsed might seem like an easy sell, given all the efforts to avoid disasters in our economy lately...but Sag Harbor has always had an independent mind--or many minds! This was a civic issue that deeply divided local residents, even producing split opinions within families...

The SHHS exhibit on the Long Island Railroad in Sag Harbor chronicles the fight to bring the Railroad to Sag Harbor. Our Annual Meeting will include the exhibit opening, along with a reading from an 1870 newspaper article on the arrival of the railroad, read by Sag Harbor Express Editor Emertius Bryan Boyhan.

Stop in anytime after the exhibit opens at the Annual Meeting to learn more about our favorite Sag Harbor characters, like Frank French, Captain Gibbs and the fearsome "Fenian" woman Betsy Josey....