Massatayun Creek

The Massatayum Creek existed as a result of the Labrador Glacier, a million years before, put down a terminal moraine, and during its melting of glacial advances, subterranean rivers coursing under ice masses broke through and flowed across the island to the sea. Saturated with gravel and debris they built the plains on which Bethpage stands. In the beginning when this creek was formed and sustained in Broad Hollow - west of Bethpage State Park - by drainage from the Manetto Hills on the east and from the Hempstead Plains on the West. It ran at the foot of a low sandy bluff through fields of flowers and bushes. Just north of Christopher Stymus home (built about 1768) near today (2014) where the Bethpage Tennis Center is located. The stream ran below a slope where early settlers rest in a small graveyard. Past the Stymus house and under Jericho Path (now Central Avenue) the stream ran on. It was shallow and probably not more then 10 feet in width, turning southeastward just beyond the house where it joined by another stream flowing from Manetto Hills. Considerably deeper now the Massatayun reached Whitson's Hollow (presently occupied by the Bethpage spur of the Southern State Parkway). Along this line the stream marked the western boundary of Thomas Powell's 1683 Purchase as revealed in his deed of 1695 and determined the eastern bounds of his Rim of Woods Purchase, 1699. The stream that flowed across our area, as it joined up with other streams, finding its way to the Great South Bay, now met with the growth and development of the railroad and the L. I. Motor Parkway to change the course of the streams. Further development of highways and homes diverted the surface water elsewhere as its headwaters remain somewhere under the Expressway - 135.