SHELTER ISLAND HEIGHTS, LONG ISLAND

Shelter Island Heights, Long Island

Shelter Island Heights is a hamlet and census-designated place located in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. It is within the Town of Shelter Island. The neighborhood has a total area of 5.6 square miles of which, 5.4 square miles of it is land and 0.3 square miles of it is water. Shelter Island Heights encompasses the north side of the island of Shelter Island, and west of the village of Dering Harbor. As of the 2000 census, there were 981 people, 459 households, and 302 families residing in the CDP. The median income for a household in the CDP was $65,446, and the median income for a family was $76,162. Males had a median income of $46,750 and only $37,955 for females. Shelter Island Heights ZIP Code is 11965. Area Code is 631. The latitude of Shelter Island Heights is 41.083N. The longitude is -72.356W. It is in the Eastern Standard time zone. Elevation is 56 feet.

In 1652, a sugar merchant from Barbados named Nathaniel Sylvester assumed sole title to Shelter Island and became its first white residents, when it became a town, and the island developed slowly. By mid-century, there were about 900 islanders farmed and made fertilizer from the mossbunker herring. The northwest corner of the island, eventually the Heights, was bought up in the early 19th century by Frederick Chase, who named his domain Prospect. Then, a group of 24 Brooklyn clergymen and laymen, incorporated as the Shelter Island Grove and Camp Meeting Association of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1871, bought the Chase acres on the condition that the two factories converting mossbunker herring to fertilizer, a most decidedly malodorous process is removed. The camp meetings were moved to Jamesport after 8 years. In recent time, the Shelter Island Heights Property Owners Association is committed and responsible in preserving the distinctive character of the community, its historic buildings, and its physical environment.

The racial-makeup of Shelter Island Heights comprises of 98.17% White, 0.31% African American, 0.41% Asian, and 1.12% from two or more races. Most of its resident’s ancestries were English, German, Irish, Italian, Polish, Scottish, Russian, French, Dutch, and Hungarian. Shelter Island Heights is served by the Shelter Island Union Free School District with an enrollment of about 275 children, and class size averages of 22 pupils. There public schools spend at least $11,582 per student. The average school expenditure in the United States is $6,058. There are about 16 students per teacher in the area. The Heights is considered as a beautiful example of the picturesque, naturalistic landscape, and romantic rural residential areas created by the first generation of American landscape architects. It is also among the few preserved communities that combined facilities for religious camp meetings with summer resort living close to New York and Connecticut.