Jackson Heights, Queens that bisects the neighborhood. John C. Jackson built the road across what is now Jackson Heights in 1859. The Jackson Avenue name is retained by this major road in a short stretch between Queens Plaza and Queens–Midtown Tunnel in Long Island City. The place was not particularly high, but the name "heights" showed that the place was originally meant to be exclusive. Until 1916, the area was called "Trains Meadow", but contrary to the name, there were very few trains in the area. It is suspected that it was corrupted from "drain". The first land purchase of was completed in
Jackson Heights, Queens to move in by the 1940s and blacks by 1968. Beginning in the 1960s, an influx of newly immigrated residents came into Jackson Heights, at the same time that existing residents were leaving for suburbs due to white flight. Hispanic immigrants moved in by the 1970s. By then, white residents who remained in the neighborhood wished to eliminate the stigma of Jackson Heights being an ethnically diverse neighborhood, often defining its border as Roosevelt Avenue, because crime had started to increase in the area. By the mid-1970s, South American organized crime groups in Jackson Heights, often peddling drugs, gained national