The stunning Fire Island High Dune Wilderness Area just over the Smith Point Bridge in Shirley is named for Otis G. Pike, the Congressman who represented Suffolk from 1961 to 1979. Pike was a noted environmentalist whose legislation created the Fire Island National Seashore and the 1,381-acre park that carries his name.
Located on the barrier island that protects the mainland from the ocean, the area is the only federally designated wilderness in New York State. Seven of Fire Island’s 32 miles are designated as wilderness in a track that stretches from the National Seashore visitor’s center at Smith Point all the way to Watch Hill. Before Hurricane Sandy washed out a huge swath of the barrier beach, vehicles could traverse the dunes all the way to Davis Park and Fire Island’s other summer communities, now only accessible by boat.
Hikers making the three-mile round trip from the visitor’s tower to the breach are treated to a spectacle of both sea and terrestrial life. White tail deer make their home in forests of pine, bayberry and poison ivy, while piping plovers, an endangered species, nest in bare patches on the beach. Red foxes also inhabit the wilderness, along with hawks, snowy owls, and speedy shore birds. Red wing blackbirds fill the marshes with song and dragonflies dart among the rushes to catch mosquitoes and flies. The ocean is a haven for seals and whales and all manners of game fish–bass, bluefish, fluke–while migratory ducks raft in the bays known as Bellport and Patchogue between the island and the mainland.
A Democrat, Pike was born in Riverhead and served in the Marine Corps in the Pacific as a dive bomber and night fighter pilot during World War II. He graduated from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, completing a senior thesis titled, "American-Chinese Relations: Emphasizing the Years 1931-1941." From there, he went on to earn a law degree from Columbia Law School. He was a member of the House Armed Services Committee and headed the Congressional Special Select Committee on Intelligence, the House version of the Senate Committee on Intelligence headed by Senator Frank Church, which uncovered malfeasance in the U.S. intelligence community, including illegal spying against American antiwar protesters and dissidents.
In 1971, Pike put forward a failed bill that would have designated Gardiners Island, Cartwright Island, Gardiners Point Island, Hicks Island, and 1,000 acres of Long Island shoreline as national monuments. It was the early work of South Shore Press Columnist Karl Grossman that exposed the plan by Robert Moses to extend Ocean Parkway across the wilderness and connect to William Floyd Parkway. His reporting drew the enmity of the master developer but led to the preservation of the spectacular shoreline asset, which was once the province of Col. William Tangier Smith, an early Suffolk settler who owned 81,000 acres in what would become Brookhaven Town.
Congressman Pike was succeeded by Conservative Bill Carney and then by a succession of both Democrats and Republicans, with the district now represented by Nick LaLota. Thanks to Gerrymandering, Pike’s former district doesn’t include the wilderness named in his honor. That distinction goes to Rep. Andrew Garbarino.