Massapequa, NY

Massapequa is a Nassau County census-designated place with 21,355 residents counted in 2020. A Town of Oyster Bay marker at Fort Neck identifies the vicinity as a place where Massapeaq people are believed to have lived in a stockaded settlement; it also commemorates their 1658 sale of nearby meadows to colonists. Later local history includes the Massapequa Hotel, which stood on Ocean Avenue between Berkeley and Cornelius places by the 1890s. At Merrick Road and Ocean Avenue, the 423-acre Peter J. Schmitt Massapequa Preserve contains freshwater swamps, marshes, streams, lakes, and sandy-bog habitat for rare Long Island plants. The Nassau-Suffolk Greenbelt Trail begins there and follows the preserve north toward Cold Spring Harbor.