East Hampton, NY — Crash Data, Roads, History & Law

History

The Town of East Hampton occupies the easternmost end of Long Island's South Fork in Suffolk County. Lion Gardiner, who held a private grant to the island that bears his name, made the earliest European settlement within the Town's present jurisdiction on Gardiners Island in 1639, but organized town settlement did not begin until 1648, on roughly 30,000 acres the Town's own history says were purchased from the Montauket Indians.^[1] The settlers first called the town Maidstone; the name became East Hampton about fourteen years later, though the Town's own account does not give an exact date or explain the choice.^[2] Whaling, fishing, farming and cattle raising were the settlers' early industries.^[1]

The Trustees of East Hampton's own published transcription of the town's seventeenth-century records reproduces an April 29, 1648 agreement among the Sachems of Manhasset, Wyandanch, Montauk, Corchaug and Shinnecock and the governor of the New Haven Colony, followed by a separate purchase of the East Hampton portion of the land by Thomas Stanton and others, acting for the inhabitants, for 30 pounds, 4 shillings and 8 pence.^[6] Nearly four decades later, on December 9, 1686, the colonial governor's Dongan Patent to the Trustees of the Freeholders and Commonalty of the Town of East Hampton made that body the town's officially recognized governing authority; the Trustees describe it as one of the earliest documents to provide for representative government by elected officials in colonial New York.^[7] The Trustees, a body distinct from the Town Board, still exist today and continue to hold and manage the town's common lands, beaches and underwater lands under that patent.^[7]

In 1784 local citizens funded construction of Clinton Academy in East Hampton village at the request of the Reverend Samuel Buell; named for Governor George Clinton, who donated its bell, the school became one of the first academies in New York State chartered by the Board of Regents and taught young men college- and career-preparatory subjects and young women household management before the state dissolved the chartered-academy system.^[27] The East Hampton Historical Society today preserves seven historic sites in East Hampton and Amagansett, including Clinton Academy, the Mulford Farmstead and the Dominy Shops Museum.^[26]

The Town's landmarks include three sites the National Park Service has designated National Historic Landmarks: the house of Hudson River School painter Thomas Moran in East Hampton village, designated December 21, 1965; the house and studio of Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock in the hamlet of Springs, designated April 19, 1994; and the Montauk Point Lighthouse, designated March 2, 2012.^[29][30]

How the roads got here

New York State Route 27, known locally as Montauk Highway, is the Town's principal road. The New York State Department of Transportation's official touring-route description runs NY 27 through "Oakville, North Shinnecock Hills, Southampton, East Hampton," continuing to Montauk Point.^[10] The stretch of NY 27 running through East Hampton, Amagansett and Montauk (together with the Shore Parkway, Belt Parkway and Sunrise Highway to the west) carries the state's POW-MIA Memorial Highway designation.^[12]

New York State Route 114 begins at NY 27 in East Hampton and runs north through Sag Harbor, North Haven and Shelter Island to Greenport, per the same NYSDOT description.^[11] Within East Hampton and Sag Harbor, the Legislature has additionally named this stretch of NY 114 the Lost At Sea Memorial Pike.^[13]

The Town of East Hampton's own Highway Department maintains about 300 center-lane miles of local roads "from Montauk to the East Hampton/Southampton Town Line and Sag Harbor to the North," and it performs snow-and-ice maintenance on NYS Route 27 between the Village of East Hampton and Montauk Point under an agreement with the state, which retains ownership of the route.^[14][15]

Springs Fireplace Road, the hamlet of Springs' principal local road, has been the subject of a Town-commissioned corridor study evaluating traffic, land use and environmental issues along the road and the surrounding area.^[16]

Law and legal history

The Town of East Hampton owns and operates East Hampton Airport. In 2015, after a decade-long attempt at voluntary noise abatement, the Town Board codified three restrictions on aircraft noise at Town Code §§ 75-38 and 75-39: a mandatory curfew barring all aircraft from the airport between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m., an extended curfew on "Noisy Aircraft" beginning at 8:00 p.m., and a weekly one-round-trip limit on noisy aircraft.^[9] Aviation businesses sued, and in Friends of the East Hampton Airport, Inc. v. Town of East Hampton, 841 F.3d 133 (2d Cir. 2016), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that the Town was likely to have lost its claim to the Airline Deregulation Act's "proprietor exception" to federal preemption because it enacted all three local laws without first complying with the procedural requirements of the federal Airport Noise and Capacity Act of 1990 — requirements the court held apply to any public airport operator regardless of whether it accepts federal funding.^[8] The court affirmed the district court's injunction against the weekly flight-limit law and directed that the other two restrictions be enjoined as well, without deciding whether the laws would otherwise have qualified for the proprietor exception.^[8]

Like most New York municipalities, East Hampton has adopted a local prior-written-notice law. Town Code § 217-4 bars any civil action against the Town or its Superintendent of Highways for injuries caused by a defective, unsafe, dangerous or obstructed highway, bridge or culvert — including a snow or ice condition — "unless written notice of such defective, unsafe, dangerous or obstructed condition of such highway, bridge or culvert was actually given to the Town Clerk or Town Superintendent of Highways," followed by a failure to act within a reasonable time.^[24] The Town Board adopted this local law expressly "to supersede, in its application to the Town of East Hampton, Subdivisions 1 and 3 of § 65-a of the Town Law," and § 217-5 requires the Superintendent to forward any notice he receives to the Town Clerk, who must present it to the Town Board within five days or by its next meeting.^[25]

The Trustees created by the 1686 Dongan Patent hold much of the Town's ocean beachfront and underwater land in trust rather than as an ordinary municipal owner, a structure that has repeatedly put them in court over beach access. Property owners along the Napeague oceanfront between Amagansett and Montauk, including The Seaview at Amagansett, Ltd. and related plaintiffs, brought a Suffolk County Supreme Court action against the Trustees concerning "the westerly border of Napeague State Park" and regulations governing vehicular use of the beach.^[33]

Government, courts and policing

New York State established the Town of East Hampton in 1788 as a separate political entity with its own taxing and debt authority.^[4] One incorporated village, the Village of East Hampton, sits wholly within the Town's borders, and a portion of a second, the Village of Sag Harbor, straddles the line with the Town of Southampton.^[5] Legislative power rests in the Town Board.^[4]

The East Hampton Town Police Department, a New York State Department of Criminal Justice Services–accredited agency, is headquartered at 131 Wainscott Northwest Road in Wainscott — not at a Gingerbread Lane address in East Hampton village, as some published directories state — and can be reached at (631) 537-7575.^[17]

The East Hampton Town Justice Court, at 159 Pantigo Road in East Hampton, "has original jurisdiction over all crimes occurring in the Village and Town of East Hampton, and handles violations and misdemeanors to conclusion," along with Town and Village traffic, parking and code violations and civil, small-claims and landlord-tenant matters; its listed phone number is (631) 324-4134.^[19][20]

Road ownership in the Town is split between the state and the Town itself: NY 27 and NY 114 are state highways, while the Town's own Highway Department builds and maintains roads such as Springs Fireplace Road and about 300 center-lane miles of other local streets, and separately performs snow-and-ice maintenance on NY 27 east of the Village of East Hampton under an agreement with the state.^[14][15]