Meet Virginia

Two natural features in Udalls Cove Park are named for individuals: Aurora Pond, which honors the work of Preservation Committee founder Aurora Gareiss, and Virginia Point, named for Virginia Dent, who was one of Aurora’s principal collaborators. 

Virginia, a striking woman who had worked as a fashion model in her youth, was a bundle of energy. She served for years as executive director of the New York State Northeast Queens Nature and Historic Preserve Commission, a small state agency established in the 1980s by then-Sen. Frank Padavan (and eliminated a few years ago in a budget-cutting measure).

Virginia’s husband, World War II Navy veteran Tom Dent, was the lawyer who prepared the legal papers incorporating the preservation committee for Udalls Cove. He served on the organization’s board of directors for almost 40 years.

Virginia Point is the northern end of Udalls Cove Park. It lies just beyond the northern terminus of Little Neck Parkway. The point of land there is formed by the confluence of two streams that flow into Udalls Cove. One of these is Gabler’s Creek, which flows through the length of the park and now also passes through Aurora Pond. It forms the western boundary of the Virginia Point tract, which extends about a block south from the end of Little Neck Parkway as far as 34^th Avenue. The eastern stream originates in Lake Success and enters the cove from Great Neck. 

The views from Virginia Point are quite beautiful. The large expanse of salt marsh that lies between Douglaston and Great Neck are lovely and feature a wide variety of birds.

In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, oystermen and others who made their living by gathering or catching seafood lived in and around the low lying areas of the Udalls Cove Ravine between Douglaston and Little Neck. 

Among these was a small community of African Americans, whose homes were clustered near the lowest point of what is now Sandhill Road on the north side of the Long Island Rail Road and at the dead end of 243^rd Street on the south side of the railroad.

At what is now Virginia Point, there was a boat landing that was important to the locals because much of the seafood and produce from local farms was transported to market by water. Indeed the stretch of road now known as the Little Neck Parkway was originally known as Old House Landing Road.

In the first half of the 20^th century, Douglaston became an affluent suburb with many residents devoted to recreational boating. Two commercial boatyards were built where the old landing had long stood.They were named Whitlo’s and Petersen’s.

Large wooden pilings were driven into the banks and there were lifts to raise boats out of the water for repairs or winter storage. There were various shops and immediately adjacent to the boatyards were private homes where the owners lived.

These boatyards continued in operation until the early 1960s, when they closed down and, almost immediately, started to succumb to a sort of “re-absorption” by the surrounding swamp. Derelict boats, boat trailers and pickup trucks as well as the buildings themselves began to rust and rot away, while vines, weeds, reeds and trees sprang up everywhere in profusion. 

In the 1990s, the tract was incorporated into the Udalls Cove Park after the land was acquired by the city’s Parks Department.  

By half a century after the boatyards closed, the area had come to look like a little wilderness, although signs of the commercial activity that thrived there for many decades were still visible to those who ventured in. Many of the old wooden pilings are still there, though partially rotted away, and some of the derelict boats, trailers and truck bodies are still lying about. Most of them are well hidden by the overgrowth.

Next time: the restoration of Virginia Point begins.