Surveyor in Eastport, NY

Eastport town is built on Shinnecock land. The present hamlet dates to 1772, when two men built the dam that formed what has come to be called the West Pond, which created a dividing line between Brookaven and Southampton. They built two mills below the dam, a saw mill and a gristmill. By 1845, the area to the east of the West Pond had come to be known as Waterville. The land to the west was called Seatuck, after a nearby creek. When, in 1860, the United States Postal Department needed to define the town to deliver mail, it combined the two areas. The name Seatuck was dropped for being too similar to Setauket, New York and the combined area was named Eastport.

Eastport was long and best known as the center of Long Island’s duck industry. The first duck farms were established in the area in the 1880s. In the first half of the 20th century it was the capital of the production of Long Island ducks, producing 6.5 million ducks a year from 29 farms going to market. By 1915, the Long Island Duck Growers’ Association was located in Eastport; and, in 1949, Cornell University established the Duck Disease Research Laboratory there. Routine surveillance carried out by the Duck Disease Research Laboratory identified the first case of Duck hepatitis virus (DHV-1) in the United States 1949 and, in 1967, the first case of Duck plague on the American Continent.

Practically all duck farms have been phased out and the descendants of the original farmers sold the valuable waterfront property for residential development projects.