GPS finds former military sites in the US

Sept. 30, 2005

I've enjoyed your site (U.S. Coastal Artillery Photographs: Pictures of Former Coast Artillery Sites in the United States) to it from Devils Slide, CA after years ago a friend said they bathe there, also Gray Whale Cove and being from Long Island I wanted to see some of the sites in Google Earth. However, I missed some of the ones I'd like to see more of, not in any order, the forts on: Plum Island; documentation on Gardiners Rock to the north of Gardiners Island; Great Gull Island emplacements (at least one 16" and another battery there next to the Little Gull Island lighthouse; more of "what the heck were these?", i.e., the scuttled ships creating a breakwater between Friars Head and Roanoke Point on Long Island's north shore, on Long Island Sound; and of course, though there's a lot of info online, Davids Island, New Rochelle, NY.

If you have time, that manhole at Montauk Point (which I have been to a number of times, and with the Suffolk County Archaeological Association, connected to some of the research on the properties taken from the Montaukett natives in a Federal ruling of 1910 (probably in the "Tweed Courthouse" in NYC City Hall Park where in 1999 I helped delimit burials mostly associated with the "First Almshouse") was it actually an entrance/exit to the tower?

Also check out the still standing Miller Field observation tower (also a NIKE missile repair center, the production of batteries for required an EPA remediation in the West Point Foundry Cove, Cold Spring, NY I was involved with, finding the prototype for the 10" "Swamp Angel" platform patented by R.P. Parrott, used in the bombardment of Charleston, SC in the Civil War, which exploded, and investigated by the Franklin Institute and Congress) on Staten Island part of the Gateway National Park, NY which looks a lot like the observation "disguised" as cottages and other buildings that you show. I was testing 6 miles of waterfront on Staten Island for an Army Corps of Engineers flood control study for containments and walls with Panamerican Consultants, Inc. of Buffalo, NY a few years ago. It is said to be the first automated firing system in the country for a coastal battery that does not exist today? Maybe you might want to look into it.

In 1980, through a cloud of dust from Mt. St. Helens, I traveled to work in Skagway, Alaska, a railhead into the interior on narrow gauge railroad, that year the first actual road opened up to Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. As a railhead was there any harbor fortifications, observation towers, etc., ever there or on the Lynne Canal it's harbor is on as there were at Sitka, Alaska?

Finally, reading that Yale University had a group of pilots and trainees on the Great South Bay in Mastic, NY, near the William Floyd Manor (signer of the "Declaration of Independence") part of the Fire Island National Seashore now, where I worked with the NPS in getting it ready for the public with clearance archaeology, and also attended a public hearing on behalf of the Suffolk County Archaeological Association for the creation of the National Seashore) in the 1930's and there was also a shore battery gun there that used to fire at Fire Island, leaving what the writer said were deadly swirling holes in the water in the Great South Bay, maybe someone should review the entire military history of Long Island, starting with Suffolk County, not done to my knowledge.

(Sent to its webmaster, a woman underwater archaeologist at Stony Brook University and a woman historical archaeologist who worked for the NPS in Alaska.)