BY DANNY McCARTHY
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle dated 07 May 1917 included: "... Duck Growers Curtail Hatching Because of High Price of Grain. The report seems to confirm the statements recently made in The Eagle that the high price of grain was causing the big duck growers to curtail their hatching simply because they cannot afford, they claim, to feed the ducklings and bring them to marketable size for the sum they can receive in the market for a mature duck. The high price of grain, it is claimed, seriously hurt this big industry in Suffolk. Last year the county marketed about 1,000,000 ducks. At the date of the census there were but 373,136, divided among 469 farms, mostly on the big ranches however...."
Northport Journal dated August 30, 2007 had a GEORGE WALLACE article which readily explains: "... In fact the history of the Big Duck goes back to 1931, when a Riverhead duck farmer and his wife decided to construct a shop on West Main Street in Riverhead, in hopes of selling Peking Ducks to passing motorists. Martin and Jeule Maurer got the idea while traveling in California, a region of the country known for its folly-like architecture - according to the story they stopped in a coffee shop shaped like a giant coffee pot, and that got the wheels turning in their heads.
Back home on Long Island, they secured a location on Main Street in Riverhead, and enlisted the aid of two stage show set designers - William and Samuel Collins - and hired a carpenter named George Reeve to create their roadside masterpiece. The Collins' boys used a live duck as a model, which they tied to their porch; {George} Reeve did a forensic examination of a cooked chicken to plan the structure's frame.
Before too many months passed, the work was done. The wooden-framed, wire-mesh, cement-surface duck, complete with Model-T tail lights for eyes, opened for business on West Main Street, at what was renamed 'The Big Duck ranch.'
There the Big Duck resided until 1936, when the Maurers relocated their shop to the farm on Route 24 in Flanders. For fifty years, travelers headed east to the Hamptons cherished the huge concrete duck, 30 feet from beak to tail and two stories high, as a landmark to one of the east end's most durable industries.
The days of duck farming on Long Island are over of course. Today, the east end economy, aside from tourism dollars, derives from agricultural pursuits as sod farms and viniculture.
As for the Big Duck, it might have gone the way of the duck industry itself if the owners of the former Maurer farm - a couple by the name of Kia and Pouran Eshghi - hadn't donated the old fellow to Suffolk County in 1987. It seems their property was slated for development that year, and fans of the Big Duck fearful that it might get torn down, lobbied for it to be saved...."
