Liberty Island border issue. In 1830, New Jersey planned to bring suit, but the matter was resolved with a compact between the states ratified by US Congress in 1834 which set the boundary line between them as the midpoint of the shared waterways. This was later confirmed by the US Supreme Court in a 1908 case which also expounded on the compact. In 1987, US Representative Frank J. Guarini and Gerald McCann, then mayor of Jersey City, sued New York City, contending that New Jersey should have dominion over Liberty Island because it is on the New Jersey side of the state
Liberty Island for ferry service to and from the island. At the time of European colonization of the Hudson River estuary in the mid-17th century, much of the west side of Upper New York Bay contained large tidal flats which hosted vast oyster beds, a major source of food for the Lenape native people who lived there at the time. Several islands were not completely submerged at high tide. Three of them (later known as Bedloe's/Love/Liberty, Ellis, and Black Tom) were given the name Oyster Islands ("oester eilanden") by the Dutch settlers of New Netherland, the first European colony in the Mid-Atlantic