The Mast-Head: Geography Lessons Needed

We first learned there was a problem with our home address earlier this year when a guest was noticeably late for one of our kids’ birthday parties.

“Your address doesn’t come up on Cranberry Hole Road! It says Promised Land Road on my G.P.S.,” the guest’s mother said when she finally phoned for directions.

Thank the new, connected world for this problem. And it’s hardly the first time that tradition has come up against faceless tech in our neighborhood.

In 2008 I had had enough with the body of water outside the house I grew up in being identified online and in real estate advertising and the like as Napeague Bay. It had always been Gardiner’s Bay, as far as I was concerned, and since my great-great-grandfather had bought much of the land along the beach there in the 19th century from the East Hampton Town Trustees, and my family had never not called it Gardiner’s Bay, I figured I was on pretty good ground.

Reading somewhere about a federal board that deals with such things, I sent off a letter. Some time later, I heard back; Steve Boerner, an archivist at the East Hampton Library, was assigned by the United States Committee on Geographic Place Names to look into the matter. It took a while, but we are in the closing phase of this effort to correct the maps. The committee has asked Steve and me to recommend where to draw the line where Gardiner’s Bay ends and Napeague Bay begins.

According to the East Hampton Town Trustees’ own records, Hicks Island, just to the east of Lazy Point, was described as fronting on Gardiner’s Bay in an 1865 trespassing lawsuit. Steve and I have proposed that nothing west of a line between Goff Point and Cartwright Island be referred to as Napeague Bay, and that the maps and digital databases be clarified on this point.

I have strong support in a number of documents, including the Devon Yacht Club charter and some lovely old print advertisements from The Star for a store that used to be at Promised Land at the eastern side of our U-shaped embayment.

To its credit, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration navigation charts have always reflected the correct name for this portion of Gardiner’s Bay, something that should be obvious to anyone who has ever passed over the waters there anyway, as the depth changes somewhere off to the north of Hicks Island, the sea life changes, and just the feel of the water is somehow, if ineffably, different.

We will see what the committee’s reaction is. As to Promised Land Road, I guess it is time for another letter.