Mill Rock is a small uninhabited island between

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

and

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. It lies about off Manhattan's East 96th Street,"Mill Rock Park", New York City Department of Parks & Recreation
/ref> south of Randalls and Wards Islands, where the

East River The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary in New York City. The waterway, which is actually not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates the borough of Quee ...

and

Harlem River The Harlem River is an tidal strait in New York, United States, flowing between the Hudson River and the East River and separating the island of Manhattan from the Bronx on the New York mainland. The northern stretch, also called the Spuyt ...

converge. Mill Rock is located at

Hell Gate Hell Gate is a narrow tidal strait in the East River in New York City. It separates Astoria, Queens, from Randall's and Wards Islands. Etymology The name "Hell Gate" is a corruption of the Dutch phrase ''Hellegat'' (it first appeared on ...

, formerly an infamously treacherous area for ships to pass.

History

The island was originally two smaller islands when William Hallet bought them from the local tribes in 1664. In 1701, John Marsh built a mill on one of them and the islands came to be called Great Mill Rock and Little Mill Rock. During the

War of 1812 The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It be ...

, the

War Department War Department may refer to: * War Department (United Kingdom) * United States Department of War (1789–1947) See also * War Office, a former department of the British Government * Ministry of defence * Ministry of War * Ministry of Defence * D ...

built a

blockhouse A blockhouse is a small fortification, usually consisting of one or more rooms with loopholes, allowing its defenders to fire in various directions. It is usually an isolated fort in the form of a single building, serving as a defensive stro ...

with two cannons on Great Mill Rock. This fortification was part of a chain of blockhouses that was intended to defend

New York Harbor New York Harbor is at the mouth of the Hudson River where it empties into New York Bay near the East River tidal estuary, and then into the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast of the United States. It is one of the largest natural harbors in ...

and protect the passage into

Long Island Sound Long Island Sound is a marine sound and tidal estuary of the Atlantic Ocean. It lies predominantly between the U.S. state of Connecticut to the north and Long Island in New York to the south. From west to east, the sound stretches from the Eas ...

against the

British Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against Fr ...

. The island was later squatted by Sandy Gibson, who operated a farm there from 1840 to 1898. The

United States Army Corps of Engineers , colors = , anniversaries = 16 June (Organization Day) , battles = , battles_label = Wars , website = , commander1 = ...

started clearing rocks from Hell Gate in the late 19th century. In 1885, USACE detonated 300,000 lb (136,000 kg) of explosives on adjoining Flood Rock; that island had been the most treacherous impediment to East River shipping. It was, most likely, the most forceful explosion in New York City's history at the time; it was felt as far away as

Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of w ...

. The explosion has been described as "the largest planned explosion before testing began for the atomic bomb", although the

detonation Detonation () is a type of combustion involving a supersonic exothermic front accelerating through a medium that eventually drives a shock front propagating directly in front of it. Detonations propagate supersonically through shock waves with s ...

at the Battle of Messines in 1917 was larger. In 1890 the Flood Island remnants were used to fill the space between Great and Little Mill Rocks, producing Mill Rock.

Mill Rock Park

The island is owned by the City of New York and maintained by the

New York City Department of Parks and Recreation The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, also called the Parks Department or NYC Parks, is the department of the government of New York City responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecolo ...

as Mill Rock Park. There is a dock on the southern shore of the island but it has not been open to the public since the 1960s, when there were public events, and it has since been allowed to return to its state of shrubbery. Since about 2008, the island has been home to a nesting colony of

black-crowned night heron The black-crowned night heron (''Nycticorax nycticorax''), or black-capped night heron, commonly shortened to just night heron in Eurasia, is a medium-sized heron found throughout a large part of the world, including parts of Europe, Asia, and N ...

s, great egrets, snowy egrets,

great black-backed gull The great black-backed gull (''Larus marinus'') is the largest member of the gull family. Described by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as "the king of the Atlantic waterfront", it is a very aggressive hunter, pirate, and scavenger. It breeds on t ...

fish crow The fish crow (''Corvus ossifragus'') is a species of crow associated with wetland habitats in the eastern and southeastern United States. Taxonomy and etymology The fish crow was given its binomial name by the Scottish ornithologist Alexan ...

s, and

double-crested cormorant The double-crested cormorant (''Nannopterum auritum'') is a member of the cormorant family of water birds. It is found near rivers and lakes, and in coastal areas, and is widely distributed across North America, from the Aleutian Islands in A ...

s. The herons and egrets are thought to have moved to Mill Rock from nearby North Brother Island.

References

External links

Mill Rock Island: Block 9000, Block Group 9, Census Tract 238, New York County; United States Census Bureau
{{authority control History of New York City Islands of Manhattan Protected areas of Manhattan Parks in Manhattan Islands of the East River Uninhabited islands of New York (state)