Inhabitants
Fire Island is a very seasonal area, Housing is mostly stick-built bungalow-style with generous helpings of bamboo. Some are beachfront, built on the dunes of the Atlantic Ocean, while others are on board or concrete walks, like a miniaturized city. There are few residents in winter months, but the population explodes towards the end of spring. The lifestyle is very casual and friendly, with Ocean Beach as the main destination for tourists and day trippers. Year-round residents can find schools, churches, shops and even a school bus service to Long Island via an off-road modified school bus.
The quiet villages on Fire Island provide solitude, while the larger towns like Ocean Beach and Cherry Grove provide a more social atmosphere with clubs, bars and open air dining. Two of these hamlets, Fire Island Pines and Cherry Grove, are popular destinations for LGBT vacationers.
The incorporated villages of Ocean Beach and Saltaire within Fire Island National Seashore are car-free during the summer tourist season (Memorial Day through Labor Day) and permit only pedestrian and bicycle traffic (during certain hours only in Ocean Beach). For off-season use, there are a limited number of driving permits for year-round residents and contractors. The hamlet of Davis Park allows no vehicles or bicycles year-round. Fire Island also contains a number of unincorporated villages (hamlets).
Beach erosion, largely due to construction of jetties at the Moriches Inlet, opened naturally by a storm in 1931 and widened September 21, 1938, is described in a report on the geological effects of the Hurricane of 1938.
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Famous quotes containing the word inhabitants:
“Were it possible so to accelerate the intercourse between every part of the globe that all its inhabitants could be united under the superintending authority of an ecumenical Council, how great a portion of human evils would be avoided.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“There were three classes of inhabitants who either frequent or inhabit the country which we had now entered: first, the loggers, who, for a part of the year, the winter and spring, are far the most numerous, but in the summer, except for a few explorers for timber, completely desert it; second, the few settlers I have named, the only permanent inhabitants, who live on the verge of it, and help raise supplies for the former; third, the hunters, mostly Indians, who range over it in their season.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)