Swim Across America - Nassau-Suffolk

At Pryibil Beach in Glen Cove, New York, the annual Swim Across America - Nassau-Suffolk brings open water swimmers together for a community gathering dedicated to raising funds for cancer research and patient programs. Swimmers gather on the sand in the morning calm, checking their goggles and watching the gentle swell roll across the wide sound before stepping into the water. The event provides a welcoming spectrum of distances designed for every level of swimmer, anchored by the classic one-mile course of 1,609 meters. Alongside the mile, participants can choose a half-mile distance, 2-mile and 5-kilometer courses, or take part with younger family members in the Family Fun Swim. In past editions, organizers have also offered an ambitious 10-kilometer marathon course for endurance athletes testing their pacing across open sound waters.

Navigating past the turning buoys under the summer sun, swimmers find their stroke in clear sea conditions. Swim Across America was founded in 1987 with the mission of turning open water swimming into a national movement to support cancer research. The Nassau-Suffolk benefit swim has been rooted in Glen Cove throughout its long history, originally launching its courses from Morgan Memorial Park before making its permanent home at Pryibil Beach. For its twenty-fifth anniversary milestone, 166 swimmers took to the sound, supported directly by the city of Glen Cove through its police force, emergency medical services, Recreation Department, and active Harbor Patrol boats maintaining the race perimeter.

Dosoris and East Island: causeways and Gilded Age arboretums

East Island is situated directly on the north shore of Long Island Sound. Before colonial settlements and tidal industry appeared along these inlets, the Matinecock tribe lived here as the original inhabitants of the island. A narrow causeway connects Dosoris Island to the mainland shore. In early industrial days, John Butler harnessed the daily rise and fall of the sea, operating working tide mills on the dam that spans between East Island and West Island. By 1889, builders had constructed a stone seawall completely encircling Dosoris Island, planting it with various vines to soften its face and secure the island edges against winter storms. The property was developed as a coastal haven featuring a 28-acre pond and a 250-foot dock stretching out into the sound. Charles A. Dana transformed the island landscape into an expansive arboretum, gathering and cultivating rare specimen trees collected across North America, Europe, and Asia.

Welwyn Preserve: salt marshes and sound estates

Two kilometers to the west of Pryibil Beach, the protected coast of Welwyn Preserve commands an open outlook over Long Island Sound. Within this coastal preserve, a tidal inlet admits seawater deep into the woods, sustaining a natural salt marsh where fluctuating tides nourish wetland grasses.

Hempstead Harbor: oyster sloops and the sands of Manhattan

Hempstead Harbor branches off Long Island Sound. The harbor is bordered to the west by the Cow Neck Peninsula, which sits bounded between Manhasset Bay to the west, Hempstead Harbor to the east, and Long Island Sound to the north. Before World War I, duck hunters, fishermen, and seasonal campers built small wooden shacks out on the marsh flats of the town-owned wetlands. The bay holds a notable place in naval history as the intended namesake for the USS Hempstead, a proposed Navy seaplane tender that was planned though never ultimately constructed. From 1865 until 1989, commercial operations mined 130 million cubic meters of sand along the western shores of Hempstead Harbor.

Mining companies on the peninsula excavated and barged more than 100 million tons of sand directly to Manhattan. Approximately ninety percent of the concrete that forms the structural foundations of New York City originated from these Port Washington sand pits along Hempstead Harbor. The historic gaff-rigged oyster sloop Christeen was built in 1883 at Glenwood Landing, seven kilometers from the race area, specifically to harvest rich oyster beds in Oyster Bay and Cold Spring Harbor. The hamlet of Oyster Bay developed on the shore of that inlet, which cuts into Long Island's north shore. In 1914, Christeen was adapted to haul loads of Long Island potatoes across the sound to New London, Connecticut, carrying furniture and goods back from New York City.

After surviving sixteen hurricanes and countless nor'easters, the historic vessel was abandoned and nearly sank in New London in 1989 before being rescued. On the eastern coastline of Hempstead Harbor sits Harry Tappen Beach, where a dedicated saltwater pool for residents replaced an earlier community pool that had operated on the site for fifty years until closing in 1977. Across the water, North Hempstead Beach Park spans sixty acres along the harbor, incorporating a half-mile beachfront historically known as Barrow Beach with dedicated spaces for recreational boating and shore fishing. In 1986, local citizens established the Coalition to Save Hempstead Harbor to confront contamination from the Roslyn Sewage Treatment Plant.

Municipal cooperation expanded in 1995 with the founding of the Hempstead Harbor Protection Committee, working to safeguard the bay's natural environment. Thanks to decades of focused preservation, swimmers at Pryibil Beach enter clean, buoyant coastal waters, greeted by the open expanses of Long Island Sound.