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 have that distinction in a tract that stretches from the Seashore visitor center at Smith Point all the way to Watch Hill.
Hikers are treated to a spectacle of both marine and terrestrial life. White-tailed deer make their home in forests of pine, bayberry, and poison ivy, while piping plovers—an endangered species—nest in bare patches along the beach. Red foxes also inhabit the wilderness, along with hawks, snowy owls, and speedy shorebirds. Red-winged 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 manner of game fish—bass, bluefish, and fluke—while migratory ducks raft in the bays between the island and the mainland.
It was the work of South Shore Press columnist Karl Grossman that exposed a plan by Robert Moses to extend Ocean Parkway across the wilderness and connect it to William Floyd Parkway. His reporting led to the preservation of this 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 later become Brookhaven Town.
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 Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs and later earned a law degree from Columbia Law School.