The Overlooked Islands Of New York

Unearthing New York’s hidden histories, from buried bodies to heron sanctuaries.

- Robert Sullivan

I am floating up the shores of the Arthur Kill, the brown-water tidal strait that separates Staten Island from New Jersey, with Rob Buchanan, a teacher and boatbuilder. On the bedraggled green edge of Staten Island, the water’s end of Victory Boulevard, we pass a plastic chair, the universal marker of a secret water-viewing sanctuary, and the Pratt Indus tries paper mill, recycling New York City paper into boxes for Home Depot. On the port side, we see rows of oil refineries, along with an Amazon fulfillment center. The landscape is that of nature bathed in the smog of highway, refinery, and Newark airport. Just past the citgo refinery, we come to a crook in the Arthur Kill, in which sits a parenthesis-shaped roughly 100- acre spit of land. “Pralls Island up ahead!” says Buchanan.