page_title: Rockaway, Queens
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Rockaway, Queens / History / Early history
caption_attribution_description: English: Rockaway Beach area of southwestern-most Long Island, Queens county, outside Coney Island - New York.
context_page_description: The Rockaway Peninsula, commonly referred to as The Rockaways or Rockaway, is the name of a peninsula within the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, New York. Relatively isolated from Manhattan and other more urban parts of the city, Rockaway became a popular summer retreat in the 1830s. It has since become a mixture of lower, middle, and upper-class neighborhoods. In the 2010s, it became one of the city's most quickly gentrifying areas.
  The peninsula is divided into nine neighborhoods or sections. From east to west, they are:
  Far Rockaway, from the Nassau County line to Beach 32nd Street;
  Bayswater, located to the northeast of Far Rockaway, along the southeastern shore of Jamaica Bay
  Edgemere, from Beach 32nd Street to Beach 56th Street;
  Arverne, from Beach 56th Street to Beach 79th Street;
  Rockaway Beach, from 79th Street to Beach 108th Street;
  Rockaway Park, from Beach 108th Street to Beach 126th Street;
  Belle Harbor, from Beach 126th Street to Beach 141st Street;
  Neponsit, Beach 141st Street to Beach 149th Street;
  Breezy Point, from Beach 149th to the western tip.
context_section_description: In September 1609, Henry Hudson and his crew were the first Europeans recorded as seeing the area of the Rockaways and Jamaica Bay. Hudson was attempting to find the Northwest Passage. On September 11, Hudson sailed into the Upper New York Bay, and the following day began a journey up what is now called the Hudson River in his honor.
  By 1639, the Mohegan tribe sold most of the Rockaways to the Dutch West India Company. In 1664, the English defeated the Dutch colony and took over their lands in present-day New York. In 1685, the band chief, Tackapoucha, and the English governor of the province agreed to sell the Rockaways to a Captain Palmer for 31 pounds sterling. The Rockaway Peninsula was originally designated as part of the Town of Hempstead, then a part of Queens County. Palmer and the Town of Hempstead disputed over who owned Rockaway, so in 1687 he sold the land to Richard Cornell, an iron master from Flushing. Cornell and his family lived on a homestead on what is now Central Avenue, near the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. At his death, Cornell was buried in a small family cemetery, Cornell Cemetery.
caption: Aerial view of the Rockaway Peninsula (looking west)
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