Smith Point County Park

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TWA Memorial

Smith Point County Park is a park on the Atlantic Ocean on the east end of Fire Island, New York in central Long Island by Shirley that is largest park owned by Suffolk County, New York.

The park derives its name from Smith Point which is a peninsula on the Long Island mainland sticking into Bellport Bay which in turn was named for William "Tangier" Smith who in the 1600s owned 50 miles of ocean front property in the Manor of St. George. The Smith Point peninsula is not actually owned by the park. Some people misconstrue that the point refers to the end of Fire Island on Moriches Inlet.

Access to the beach as well as the rest of the park is provided by William Floyd Parkway which crosses Narrow Bay on the two-lane Smith Point Bridge. Large parking fields with tunnels to the seashore are in the area immediately at the end of the Parkway. A jeep road (with access with permit) extends the end of the island.

The park extends from the east end of the Fire Island Wilderness portion of the National Seashore to the end of the island at Moriches Inlet.

[edit] TWA Flight 800 International Memorial

On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747-131 en route from New York City to Paris, France and Rome, Italy, crashed 14 miles away from the park killing all aboard.

The TWA Flight 800 International Memorial was dedicated in a 2-acre parcel immediately adjoining the main pavilion at the park on July 14, 2004. Funds for the memorial were raised by the Families of TWA Flight 800 Association. The memorial includes landscaped grounds, flags from the 14 countries of the victims and a curved black granite memorial with the names engraved on one side and an illustration on the other of a wave releasing 230 seagulls into the sky. In July 2006 an abstract design of a 10-foot high lighthouse in black granite designed by Harry Edward Seaman who had lost in the cousin in the crash was added. The lighthouse sits above a tomb holding many of the victims' personal belongings.^[1]