Coney Island Creek

Coney Island Creek
Coney Island Creek
Country	United States
State	New York
City	Brooklyn, NY
Source
- location	Shell Road (culvert under the road)
Mouth	Gravesend Bay
Length	1.8 mi (3 km) Partially land-filled in the early 20th century

Coney Island Creek is a 1.8 miles (2.9 km) long tidal inlet in Brooklyn, New York City. It used to be a 3 miles (4.8 km) long continual strait and a partial mudflat connecting Gravesend Bay and Sheepshead Bay, making Coney Island an actual island, but the eastern half of the creek was filled in during a period spanning the early to mid in the 20th century.

Coney Island Creek extends eastward 1.8 miles (2.9 km) from Gravesend Bay to Shell Road and separates the west end of Coney Island from the neighborhoods of Gravesend and Bath Beach. The west end of the creek is bordered by Coney Island Creek Park and Kaiser Park on the south side, and Calvert Vaux Park and Six Diamonds Park on the north side. The creek is crossed by the Cropsey Avenue and Stillwell Avenue bridges as well as two parallel rail trestles carrying the West End and Sea Beach Lines. The eastern end is bordered by the Shore Parkway on the north side and Neptune Avenue on the south side. Marine traffic is restricted by a cable net between Cropsey and Stillwell Avenues. The eastern portion of Coney Island Creek runs along private industrial property and several acres owned by Keyspan, the local electricity provider.

At the time of European settlement the land that makes up the present day Coney Island was several barrier islands with interconnecting waterways that were all constantly changing shape. The waterway that became Coney Island Creek did not originally extend across the back side of the island since part of the land on the west end was a peninsula called Coney Hook. Hubbard’s Creek, which ran down the eastern side of the peninsula, connected directly with the ocean. In 1750 a one quarter mile long canal (called the "Jamaica Ditch") was dug through the Coney Hook salt-marsh from a creek connecting to Gravesend Bay east to Hubbard’s creek. This new waterway, allowing shipping traffic to travel from Jamaica Bay to New York Harbor without having to venture out into the ocean, connected Gravesend Bay and Sheepshead Bay together. The waterway behind the islands was called Gravesend Creek in the early 19th century since it cut below the town of Gravesend (later the name was used interchangeably with "Coney Island Creek"). Eventually Hubbard’s and the other creeks and inlets that separated the islands were filled by a combination of natural process and land development, leaving just a single island that came to be called Coney Island and a single creek behind it that came to be called Coney Island Creek.