How Radioactive Debris Led to the Closure of Brooklyn’s Glass Bottle Beach in Dead Horse Bay
Ryan Socash of It’s History examined the long, tragic history of Dead Horse Bay, a small body of water off Barren Island between Gerritsen Inlet and Rockaway Inlet in Brooklyn. Beginning in the 1870s, the bay became a dumping ground for horse carcasses from nearby rendering plants, while New York City later filled part of the site with municipal solid waste between 1948 and the mid-1950s.
As erosion exposed the old landfill, thousands of bottles and other household artifacts appeared along the shoreline, earning it the nickname Glass Bottle Beach. The area’s history also includes the 1936 eviction of roughly 400 Barren Island residents to make way for the Marine Parkway Bridge.
From the rotting remains of 19th-century horses used to power the city’s streets to the millions of household artifacts discarded by a metropolis, Dead Horse Bay tells a dark story of urban expansion, forced evictions, and environmental disaster.
National Park Service surveys beginning in 2019 identified multiple locations with elevated radiation and recovered two leaking radium-226 deck markers buried about two feet below the surface. The agency closed approximately 84 acres of the southern site in August 2020 while the investigation continued.
