History
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This twelve-acre island has borne many names and served many purposes. Before European colonization, the Canarsie community, part of the Lenape-Delaware people, called it Minnissais, or Lesser Island. Later European colonists knew it as Love, Kennedy, Great Oyster, Corporation, and Bedloe's Island. Over the years it was used as a Lenape fishing and oystering site, a colonial farm, a summer house, a quarantine station, a Tory refuge, a French naval hospital, a dump, a gallows, a military prison, and eventually a military fortification named Fort Wood. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed Fort Wood and the Statue of Liberty a national monument. Since 1937, the entire island has been part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. In 1956, its name was changed from Bedloe's Island to Liberty Island.
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New York, New York · United States
