Government

The roads they never built across the North Fork

[Click to enlarge] A series of 18 roads connected by four main roads extending from a traffic circle was once proposed for East Marion. (Credit: Oysterponds Historical Society)
[Click to enlarge] A series of 18 roads connected by four main roads extending from a traffic circle was once proposed for East Marion. (Credit: Oysterponds Historical Society)
Ironically, the widening of the western part of Route 48 in the early 1970s — from two lanes to four for about 60 percent of its length — was reportedly undertaken with the expectation that it would connect to the planned LIE extension.

At around the same time, a plan was also floated to widen Sound Avenue from two to four lanes through western Mattituck and Northville, bringing that road, long cherished for its pastoral character, into conformity with the widened part of County Route 48.

The old Long Island Lighting Company planned to build nuclear power plants near Sound Avenue in Northville and Jamesport and wanted it widened for easier access to the construction sites, recalled Bill Toedter, president of the North Fork Environmental Council. State designation of the Colonial-era road as a historic corridor in 1975 effectively put an end to the plan.

“The farm community came together and said, ‘We can’t do this,’ ” Mr. Toedter said, adding that the widening “would have taken some of the oldest farmland in the area.”

Of course, the proposed dramatic restructuring of our roadways did not come about in just the past 50 years. East Marion remains a relatively low-key community today, but it surely would have taken a different turn decades earlier if a plan unveiled by Herbert L. Fordham had come to pass. In the Great Depression year of 1934, no less, Mr. Fordham, a lawyer and East Marion resident, rolled out a street plan for the hamlet that makes it look practically as densely packed as Brooklyn.

Running north from Main Road were 18 streets, some leading to a traffic circle with four roads radiating from it. Slicing through the hamlet was a major east-west thoroughfare parallel to Main Road, labeled Express Highway, that would have crossed Dam Pond from a point located in what’s now the beautiful Dam Pond Preserve.

About 50 years later, another east-west thoroughfare north of Main Road was envisioned for Southold Town. While conceived of as a modest town road about 30 feet wide, it would have extended from Orient Point to Mattituck, with a gap or two in between, and run one or two lots back from Long Island Sound, recalled Henry Raynor Jr., who chaired the Southold Town Planning Board in the early 1980s.

“It was usually shown [on town maps] as a strip of land labeled for possible future dedication to the town for the highway,” he said.

The road never materialized, Mr. Raynor explained, because the town revised its zoning regulations so as to create larger lots. “Density was reduced,” he said, “so you wouldn’t have the traffic that was foreseen.”

Today, the aborted road plan is such a distant memory that current Southold Town planning director Heather Lanza was unaware of it until contacted by a reporter; it’s no longer in the town’s master plan.

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