Squassux Landing:  A Community Treasure

Centuries ago "Squassuks Landing" was something of a port of entry for the area of Long Island that was then called Fire Place. For the most recent century or so, Squassux Landing has been more a point of departure – a mooring place for working boats, ferry boats, and pleasure boats plying the Great South Bay.

Early in this century James H, Post, one of Brookhaven Hamlet’s early civic activists and benefactor, purchased the Squassux Landing property and made its shore available to local boaters. Harold Lyons of Bellport recalls that as teenagers in the mid-1920s, he and his friends had boats and kept them moored at Squassux Landing. As he puts it, "Anybody who wanted to could keep a boat there. It was run by the Village Association, but there was no fee. Later, in the thirties or forties, it cost about five dollars to keep a boat there."

In 1945, the property was deeded to the Village Association by Mr. Post’s heirs, Jessie Wells Post, Helen Post Hubert, and Elisabeth Post Morrow. It has since been maintained and operated by the BVA as a nonprofit boat landing for the use of residents of Brookhaven Hamlet. The 13-acre site now has some 200 wooden docks along the river and on two manmade canals. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the BVA’s ownership of Squassux Landing. Over these years, the Village Association has maintained the Landing in a low-key, traditional fashion, and the site is treasured by our community as much for its natural beauty as for its access to the local waters.