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
Long Island Sound link Federal Highway Administration. Opposition to the bridge was beginning to form on both sides of Long Island Sound. In addition, plans to turn the Oyster Bay area into a bird sanctuary and a protected park made working on the highway harder, as building on such protected places is forbidden by law. Faced with growing opposition, Governor Rockefeller canceled the plans for the bridge on June 20, 1973, nine years after the first proposal by Moses. In January 2008, this idea was revived when developer Vincent Polimeni proposed building a privately financed, tolled tunnel between Oyster Bay on Long Island and