Page:Vincent F. Seyfried - The Long Island Rail Road A Comprehensive History - Vol. 1 (1961).pdf/29

 22 just why this was so. We can only surmise that the tempting offers of stock and land were not as readily forthcoming as the railroad was led to expect, or, more likely, that the Long Island Rail Road's hasty extension to Sag Harbor just a few months later on June 8, 1870 siphoned off what little traffic originated on the east end.

The directors of the South Side RR were too astute and forward looking however, to waste the season of 1869 in idleness. From the very earliest days of the incorporation of the road, they had cast an appraising eye on the traffic possibilities of the Rockaways, as yet untapped by the Long Island RR. Before the Civil War, surf bathing and beach visiting were virtually unknown; it is difficult to imagine in our day when sun bathing and swimming have become a national cult and part of the mores of American society, that great beaches like Coney Island and Rockaway, only a few miles from the metropolis, were deserted and barren sand dunes.

In 1816 the Pavilion, the first seaside resort hotel in Rockaway opened its doors. During the 1830's visiting the Pavilion became fashionable, but not for the bathing facilities available. Persons of wealth boarded at the shore, ate quantities of "Rockaways," the most esteemed clams of that day, and attended cotillions and concerts in the evening. Life had a leisurely and aristocratic flavor, and none but the wealthy could afford the long, costly trip to the beach.

When the Pavilion burned down in 1863, it marked the end of an era. Hitherto, to get to Far Rockaway, one took the train to Jamaica, and then hired a stage coach to traverse the swampy stretches of the Jamaica & Rockaway Turnpike Co. (Rockaway Boulevard) to the shore. In October 1865 this primitive mode of travel was rendered obsolete by the opening of the Brooklyn and Rockaway Beach RR from East New York due south to Canarsie, where the traveler boarded one of the railroad's launches to any one of three landings, presently corresponding to Beach 111th Street, Beach 103rd Street and Beach 92nd Street.

The effect of the Canarsie route was to attract traffic to the present Hammel's, Seasideand Rockaway Beach and away from Far Rockaway. A further injury occurred in 1866 when the spring tides caused a long sand bar to form opposite the old Far Rockaway Beach about half a mile out in the water. The