Ellis Island the region. The oyster beds remained a major source of food for nearly three centuries. Landfilling to build the railyards of the Lehigh Valley Railroad and the Central Railroad of New Jersey eventually obliterated the oyster beds, engulfed one island, and brought the shoreline much closer to the others. During the colonial period, Little Oyster Island was known as Dyre's, then Bucking Island. In the 1760s, after some pirates were hanged from one of the island's scrubby trees, it became known as Gibbet Island. It was acquired by Samuel Ellis, a colonial New Yorker and merchant possibly from Wales, around
Hog Island (Virginia) of the largest was in the town of Broadwater, Virginia, on Hog Island. Founded in the mid-19th century the town was located in a clearing in the pine forest two miles from the ocean in the center of the island. In the 1930s when rapid beach erosion caused by several hurricanes that flooded the entire island made its continued existence untenable, many of the houses and other buildings in the town of Broadwater were floated by barge to the mainland and still stand in the towns of Willis Wharf and Oyster today. The Hog Island Light, a coastal beacon that