Fire Island Saved From Moses Highway Plan

By Karl Grossman | Apr 23, 2026 | Local

Sixty-four years ago, in spring 1962, I began as a reporter in Suffolk County, engaging immediately in my first “big story”—the plan of Robert Moses to build a four-lane highway on Fire Island. It would have devastated much of the exquisite nature of that barrier beach, along with its 17 very special communities. I was 20 years old.

After two years of grassroots opposition and journalism, in which I played a significant part, the highway scheme was stopped. President Lyndon Johnson, in September 1964, signed legislation establishing a Fire Island National Seashore, preserving Fire Island.

In those two years, I merged investigative reporting with environmental journalism, a combination which has been a journalistic and academic focus of mine for the next six decades.

Life has its circles, and I was delighted that Alexcy Romero, superintendent of the Fire Island National Seashore and a 1990 graduate of SUNY Old Westbury, was just a guest speaker at the school on Earth Day. As a professor at SUNY Old Westbury for 47 years, I taught courses titled Investigative Reporting and Environmental Journalism.

In his talk at the university, Romero said, “I did not know how I was going to apply my Environmental Science degree.” He found a highly positive application for it for more than three decades now at the National Park Service.

Romero has been the superintendent of Fire Island National Seashore since 2018. He spoke about how “everything we do is about protecting resources and providing a good, memorable visitor experience.” The heading of his presentation was “Cities and Seashores,” about “Long Island seashore conservation and working in public service.” Professor of Environmental Studies Dr. Claudia Diaz-Combs moderated.

Romero was originally from New York City and, upon his appointment as superintendent, said: “As a native New Yorker, I have spent many days enjoying the Great South Bay by boat, strolling the beaches of Fire Island, and have experienced some breathtaking sunsets that only Fire Island National Seashore has to offer. I look forward to working with all the communities, partners, and talented staff managing this beautiful resource that many people have come to treasure.”

In 1962, I had never been to Fire Island. But though I also was from New York City, I became an Eagle Scout there, relished nature, and my family camped during summers at Wildwood State Park in Wading River—my first experience in Suffolk County.

I got the reporter’s job at the Babylon Town Leader through an ad in The New York Times. Arriving on my first day of work, the newspaper’s publisher, James Cooper, and editor, John Maher, told me that Moses had just announced his highway plan for Fire Island, and they wanted me to go there that weekend and put together a story.

As Robert Caro, an East Hampton resident and former Newsday reporter, wrote in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1974 book, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, Moses had New York media in his pocket.

But that was not the case with the Babylon Town Leader. Moses had a home in Babylon, and through the years the Babylon Town Leader took on Moses and his projects.

I lucked out on my visit to Fire Island, connecting with Fire Islanders including TV journalist Charles Collingwood, playwright Reginald Rose, author Theodore H. White, and regular folks, who explained articulately how the island’s nature and communities would be impacted by the proposed highway. A walk in the Sunken Forest made the environmental importance of Fire Island clear to me.

I wrote a story—the first of many. Two other weekly newspapers joined us in the journalistic crusade, including running our articles: the Suffolk County News and the Long Island Commercial Review.

It was an uphill battle, and we kept pushing. We found, for example, how the four-lane highway Moses built to the west, along Jones Beach, rather than being an “anchor” of the beach—as Moses insisted a highway on Fire Island would be—needed to be regularly bolstered with sand pushed along its edges by bulldozers working at night.

The first telephone call I received the morning my first story ran was from Murray Barbash, an environmentally committed builder from Brightwaters. Murray and his brother-in-law, Babylon attorney Irving Like, co-author of New York State’s Conservation Bill of Rights, then organized a Citizens Committee for a Fire Island National Seashore. Their view was that Moses could not be stopped on the state level because of the enormous power he wielded in New York State. If Fire Island were to be saved, it would have to be through the federal government. Also, a National Seashore offered a positive goal.

It was a relatively new idea. The first, Cape Hatteras National Seashore, was created nine years earlier, in 1953. I recollect the day U.S. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, on a visit, embraced the Fire Island National Seashore vision. I remember him standing amid the Sunken Forest, a rare maritime holly forest shaped by ocean winds, viewing it with awe. Decades later, I met up with Udall at an event in New Mexico, and he recalled that day when he concluded that, even though in close proximity to the most populous city in the nation, Fire Island deserved to be a National Seashore.

Also, conservation-oriented Laurance Rockefeller, the brother of then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller, became chairman of the State Council of Parks in 1963 and liked the Fire Island National Seashore concept, too.

Moses was furious at what was happening. He confronted Nelson Rockefeller. Moses had run for governor himself, in 1934, and suffered a then-record two-to-one defeat, so he amassed power by running state commissions and authorities.

According to the Leader’s source—a person at Moses’ Long Island State Park Commission—at a climactic meeting with Rockefeller, Moses insisted the highway would happen and that the governor put a lid on his brother. If Rockefeller wouldn’t, Moses threatened he would resign from his many commission and authority posts. He seemingly thought the state would fall apart without him. In the collision, Nelson wouldn’t be steamrolled.

And happily, a Fire Island National Seashore soon came about.

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