History
Gunnison Beach was named for Battery Gunnison, a fortification built by the U.S. Government in the 1800s to protect New York Harbor. Remnants of the battery, including gun emplacements, overlook the beach. It was once part of Fort Hancock, a test site and proving ground for the U.S. Army for many years and later the site of a Nike missile defense installation. The base was decommissioned in 1972, and a few years later the beach where the soldiers used to skinny dip, opened as a public clothing-optional beach. From Memorial Day to Labor Day a $15 parking fee is charged to enter Sandy Hook.
In 1999, New Jersey passed a law that allows municipalities and counties to prohibit all types of nudism on state or local beaches in their jurisdiction, making Gunnison Beach the only legal nude beach in the state, since it is on federal land not subject to state or municipal regulations. Also, since there is no law against alcohol on federal lands drinking is allowed. Gunnison is the largest clothing-optional recreation area on the East Coast. The clothing optional beach, which offers dramatic views of Brooklyn and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, attracts nearly 5,000 naturists per weekend in the summer months. Part of the beach is shared on a seasonal basis with a reserved breeding ground for the endangered Piping Plover, a native shore bird.
Read more about this topic: Gunnison Beach
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)