Touchstone (Fort Tilden, Queens)

WHERE: Fort Tilden, on the Rockaway peninsula in Queens

NEAREST TRANSIT: Q35 bus

*Battery Harris East and the stairs leading to the viewing platform, Fort Tilden.*

Fort Tilden, part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, is located on the Rockaway peninsula between Jacob Riis Park to the east and Breezy Point to the west. From the National Park Service website, it is “a former military site that overlooks the approach to New York Harbor and today includes athletic fields, hiking trails, an arts center, a theater, and an observatory deck on a historic battery offering spectacular views of Jamaica Bay, New York Harbor, and the Manhattan skyline. Dunes, a maritime forest, freshwater ponds, and coastal defense resources including Battery Harris and the Nike Missile Launch Site are also found here.” The New York Times had a fine article about Fort Tilden in 2006 that began thus:

To reach the beach at Fort Tilden, keep the missile silos on your right, the munitions buildings on your left, and head due south of the cannon batteries.

Remember this, because there are no signs to point the way, no scents of sunscreen, lifeguard's whistles nor flying Frisbees; just these military landmarks, the briny breeze and the roar of the surf.

Once over the dunes, it may well be just you and a few stoic surfcasters there with the gulls and terns swooping and flopping on the breeze. The only clue you are still in New York City may be the hazy Manhattan skyline floating 10 miles in the distance.

Most city beaches, Coney Island … for example, have big crowds, murky waters and plenty of Scene. Fort Tilden, a former Army base along the ocean on the Rockaway peninsula, which dangles into the Atlantic Ocean off Queens, is the opposite. It has wide-open and pristine sands, a fresh sea and a rugged beachscape of barnacled bulkheads and sea-softened pilings jutting up out of the sand.

The full article, which is well worth reading, is at https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/21/arts/to-the-battlements-and-take-sunscreen-the-joys-of-fort-tilden.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Qk8.32XF.AOhnelx0xD_s&smid=url-share. At different times Fort Tilden had huge guns pointed toward the sea; later, Nike missile batteries. The guns and missiles are long gone but many structures remain, among them two huge concrete bunkers that housed 16-inch guns (the same as armed World War II battleships and some earlier ones). These are Battery Harris West and this walk’s destination, Battery Harris East.

For me, Fort Tilden is a special place. Before my stroke, I biked out to Fort Tilden often, to ride around and laze on the beach. The ride out there took about an hour, more in a stiff headwind. Very occasionally I would walk up to the top of Battery Harris East. By the summer of 2020, I hadn’t been there since before the stroke. One day, I had the urge to go out there and see if I could manage the steps up to the observation platform atop Battery Harris East. I walked about a mile (1.5 kilometers) from the bus stop to the base of the steps, had a look, and decided, “I can do this.” Up I went, 69 steps to a sandy and not easy path to the platform, another 4 steps up. Riding the bus back to Brooklyn, I thought to myself, “Next up: the 215 Street stairs in Manhattan.” And so it happened. After that climb, a friend mentioned the Joker Stairs in the Bronx, and off I went. That 2020 trip to Fort Tilden gave rise to every walk on my “Stair Streets” page, and a good many others.

For this walk I wanted to repeat that 2020 stair climb, and I did. The risers are a bit high but the stairs are in good shape. That sandy path between the top of the stairs and the observation platform must still be walked with care. It was a warm day but there was a steady, cooling breeze off the ocean. I truly felt revived and hated to leave. It was important for me to do this, to stay centered, to keep pushing myself and have fun doing so.

ONWARD!

Touchstone (Fort Tilden, Queens)

This is the Bronx????

Jamaica, Queens