Liberty Island on the National Register of Historic Places as part of Statue of Liberty National Monument, Ellis Island and Liberty Island. According to the United States Census Bureau, the island has a land area of 59,558 square meters, or 14.717 acres, which is the property of the federal government. Liberty Island is located in the Upper New York Bay within the waters of Jersey City, Hudson County, New Jersey. It is one of the islands that are part of the borough of Manhattan in New York. The historical developments which led to this construction created the rare situation of an exclave
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