Sandy Hook Coastal Defense Batteries: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Gateway National Recreation Area

Layton, Timothy; Foulds, H Eliot

The Sandy Hook Coastal Defense Batteries are part of Gateway National Recreation Area, which covers more than 40 square miles in New York and New Jersey. Established on October 27, 1972, the park provides a national park experience in the New York City area, preserving a mosaic of coastal ecosystems and natural areas interwoven with historic coastal defense and maritime sites around New York’s Outer Harbor. The park has three administrative units – Jamaica Bay, Staten Island, and Sandy Hook – that are geographically distinct but linked together by similar types of resources and recreation uses. The Sandy Hook Unit is 4,688 acres of land, bay, and ocean waters in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Part of the Middletown Township, surrounding communities include the boroughs of Atlantic Highlands, Highlands, Monmouth Beach, and Sea Bright along Route 36. The Sandy Hook Unit lies at the northern end of the New Jersey barrier island system that is characterized by relatively flat topography and undulating dunes shaped by waves and wind. The central portion of the peninsula is dominated by a maritime holly forest, which contrasts with the more developed areas concentrated at the north and south ends. The southern end features recreational facilities for visitors to enjoy the beaches and natural areas associated with the Atlantic Ocean and Sandy Hook Bay. The northern end contains the Fort Hancock and Sandy Hook Proving Ground Historic District and an active U.S. Coast Guard base. Each year, more than two million people visit Sandy Hook’s many natural and cultural resources. Over the course of more than one-hundred years, facilities at Sandy Hook have had major roles in the testing and deployment of weapons systems, including nearly every kind of seacoast artillery, harbor mines, searchlights, and RADAR systems. Fort Hancock was established in 1895 as part of a new nationwide system of coastal fortifications proposed in 1886 by the Endicott Board. Various gun batteries comprised of concrete structures and engineered earthworks were built between 1893 and 1917, and finally disarmed and mothballed by the U.S. Army following the end of World War II. The Army then briefly took Fort Hancock off-line January to June 1950 until the onset of the Korean Conflict, and soon thereafter used the property to locate missile defenses protecting the surrounding metropolitan area against bombardment by high-altitude aircraft. When the missile defense system was deemed obsolete in the early 1970s, the Army’s land, which also included a complex infrastructure of roads, railroad rights-of way, and utility corridors, was transferred to the National Park Service. Today, elements of this coastal defense system and associated infrastructure survive, though many are in an advanced state of deterioration and hidden by successional vegetation. This cultural landscape inventory documents eleven extant Endicott-Taft period gun batteries and two separate sites that comprise a NIKE missile battery. However, it does not include two sites that served as important components in Sandy Hook’s coastal defenses; the Mine Casemate, which is presently on U.S. Coast Guard property, and Battery Arrowsmith, which is located on Horseshoe Cove Point that protrudes into Sandy Hook Bay and is in a ruinous and unstable condition.

Sandy Hook Coastal Defense Batteries: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Gateway National Recreation Area

Series