Students listen to a lecture outside the lighthouse last summer.
The Stony Brook Grist Mill, Long Island's most completely equipped working mill, dating back to 1751. Beacons Into the Past Lighthouses and mills were high technology for Long Island mariners and farmers in the 1800s E arly American technology can still be glimpsed around Long Island in lighthouses and mills that survive from colonial times and the earliest days of the nation. Settlers built mills powered by the wind, streams or even the rising and falling tides to grind corn and other grains into meal or trim logs into lumber. Many communities, such as East Rockaway, formed around mills and some communities, such as Glen Cove, were formed specifically as a site to build a mill. Storms and fog contributed to shipwrecks from the earliest voyages to the New World and ship owners began lobbying for warning beacons as shipping increased in the colonial period.