Building the Beach: Sand, Dredges, and Grass

The physical creation of Jones Beach ranks among the most ambitious engineering projects of the nineteen twenties. The island Moses intended to transform was, at the start, a liability rather than an asset. It sat barely two feet above sea level, was frequently submerged during storms, and its fine sand blew constantly in the coastal wind.

Large dredging machines were brought in to pump millions of cubic yards of sand from the bay floor on the island's north side and deposit them on the island's surface, raising it to twelve feet above sea level. That sand provided the broad, flat platform on which everything else was built. The wind problem required a different solution.

Moses sent landscape architects to study Long Island beaches where dunes had stabilized naturally. They found that a specific variety of beach grass held dunes together with sideways-growing roots that locked sand in place and broke the force of the wind. In the summer of nineteen twenty eight, thousands of workers planted that grass by hand across the newly raised island, a monumental act of manual labor performed to make a beach stay put.

The Wantagh Causeway, a road and bridge crossing of Reynolds Channel, was constructed between nineteen twenty seven and nineteen twenty nine to connect the island to the mainland. When the park opened on August fourth, nineteen twenty nine, the engineering infrastructure was in place to welcome the enormous crowd that arrived.