North Shore (Long Island)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The North Shore of Long Island is the area along Long Island's northern coast, bordering Long Island Sound. Traditionally, the region has been the most affluent on Long Island and among the most affluent in the New York metropolitan area, which has earned it the nickname "the Gold Coast." Though some consider the North Shore to include parts of Queens, particularly the quasi-suburban northeastern neighborhoods such as Douglaston, the term is generally used to refer to the Long Island coastline in Nassau County and Suffolk County. It is often used as a generic name for the entire northern half of Long Island, including much of the Hempstead Plains rather than just the area immediately next to the coastline.

The North Shore has a long-held reputation of elegance and gentility. Many stately old homes can be found there, and an "old money" atmosphere pervades. In popular culture, it is perhaps best known as the setting of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, which centered on the area's wealth and the aspiration of the title character to be accepted as a part of its society. The novel's "West Egg" and "East Egg" were fictionalized versions of the real North Shore villages of Kings Point and Sands Point. The distinctive upper class speech pattern known as Locust Valley Lockjaw takes its name from the North Shore's Locust Valley area.

Being a terminal moraine of the Wisconsin glaciation, the North Shore is rocky and hilly, so its waterfront has relatively few beaches (most of Long Island's beaches are located on the flat, sandy outwash plain to the south, on the Atlantic Ocean). The majority of these are found on the eastern portion of the North Shore, in areas such as Mt. Sinai, Sound Beach, Shoreham/Wading River, and at Wildwood State Park. The North Shore beaches are, however, much more rocky than those on the shore shore but the Long Island Sound's water is typically calmer.

Though the western stretch of the North Shore is considered by most locals to be the more fashionable of Long Island's coasts, once the island splits into two forks at its east end, the North Shore becomes largely rural. This area is known as the North Fork, and it contrasts starkly with the South Fork's Hamptons. In the past 25 years, the North Fork has reinvented itself as a major center for the production of wine.