The Treasures of Pleasure Beach

By Brandon T. Bisceglia
Co-Editor in Chief

All photographs by Brandon T. Bisceglia.

Just a few yards across the water from Bridgeport Harbor lies another world.

A two-and-a-half mile peninsula juts from Point-No-Point in Stratford’s borough of Lordship out into Long Island Sound, where it widens from a sliver of sand into a swath of land large enough to have once held one of the country’s premier amusement parks.

These days, Pleasure Beach/Long Beach West is in many ways a shadow of its former
self.

In 1996, the wooden swing bridge that connected the beach to mainland Bridgeport caught fire. The bridge was the only way for vehicles to get back and forth; without it, residents had to walk across from Long Beach in Stratford, take a boat, or swim.

Over the course of a century before the fire, the Bridgeport-owned portion of the beach had been home to all kinds of entertainment projects. In 1892, the first incarnation of the amusement park was built. In the 1930’s, the Pleasure Beach Ballroom hosted world-famous big band acts such as Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman. Through the 1950’s and 60’s, the spot saw the construction of the original Polka Dot Playhouse, a roller skating rink, and other venues.

On the Stratford-owned half of the beach, over 40 cottages were built, many of which became so beloved by their owners that they continued to spend summers with their families at the getaways for years after the bridge burned and power lines began failing.

That’s all over now. The owners eventually gave up on the cottages as disagreements about money and the best use of the land between residents of both Stratford and Bridgeport caused both sides of the beach to languish in urban decay.

Scandal continues to characterize dealings surrounding Pleasure Beach/Long Beach West. Over the past few years, the now-abandoned cottages have been vandalized and looted, and a few of them burned to the ground in several cases of arson that still have not been solved.

In November 2008, Stratford residents voted overwhelmingly to sell their portion of Pleasure Beach to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) for ten million dollars. The town agreed to do so under the conditions that the FWS remove the buildings, and that the area be maintained as a nature preserve that would be accessible to Stratford residents in perpetuity.

But that deal has soured, as the federal government has lowered its assessment of the property’s value and town officials have butted heads over who gets to lead any revitalization efforts.

Meanwhile, several of the structures on the Bridgeport side were knocked over by contractors without the city administration’s knowledge or approval in the fall of 2009. It was later discovered to have been okayed by the Fire Department. The wreckage still hasn’t been removed, and debates have sparked over whether it poses an even greater safety hazard than the dilapidated buildings did when they were standing.

Last month, the FWS constructed a temporary road from Long Beach so that workers could tear down the remaining cottages and haul away the wreckage.

But they’ll have to wait until the end of the summer to do it, because there are other residents on Long Beach West/Pleasure Beach. And they require some privacy.

That’s because they are protected species of birds, and their nesting area lies in the grasses along the shore.

During the warmer months, the beach is literally swarming. There are plenty of seagulls, of course. There are also least terns, a small bird that with a black eye stripe and white underbelly that can be seen diving for fish alongside the gulls.

The most famous inhabitants by far, however, are the piping plover. Walk for a few minutes near their territory, and you are bound to hear their unmistakable call: a single, short, high-pitched “pip.” You’ll probably also see them scouring the beach for insects in their trademark style, which involves running a few yards, stopping suddenly, then running in a new direction.

The birds of Long Beach West are vivid examples of the upside to the area’s abandonment. The terns were first classified as endangered by the federal government in 1985, because their preferred nesting habitats on sandy shores were also prime real estate for humans. The plover, which are classified as threatened, are picky creatures – if there are too many humans or other large animals around their nesting sites, they move out.

Ever since the bridge burned, plants and animals have slowly begun taking over all of Pleasure Beach/Long Beach West. Without anyone to repair the roads, grasses and flowers managed to sprout between the tiny cracks in the pavement. Year after year, they patiently worked to uproot the blacktop from those crevices.

Now many of the roads are inaccessible; you’ll be confronted with a thicket so dense that you may wonder for a second if you’ve accidentally wandered into the Amazon. Parking lots that were once divided into neat rows by yellow paint are instead lined in geometric patterns of eye-high grass.

Some of the plants that have infiltrated the peninsula are rare in Connecticut. Sea lavenders, which grow only in limited ranges of marshy soil, fan their pink and purple rosettes throughout the summer. Prickly pear cactus pokes up from the sandy parts of the beach.

All sorts of common creatures have also moved in. Deer, foxes, and raccoons have all been spotted. You can’t walk more than a few yards without stumbling upon a rabbit. Even an owl has claimed the rafters of the old restaurant.

Perhaps the most awe-inspiring sight is up in the air, where ospreys circle or perch on trees. A number of them have built gigantic nests on top of the now-defunct telephone poles.

When you come anywhere near those nests, you can feel yourself being watched from above. And if you get too close, be ready for a close encounter; these raptors have no reservations about swooping at humans to protect their broods.

It’s difficult to imagine such a place within sight of HCC and I-95. But despite the other-worldly atmosphere of Pleasure Beach/Long Beach West, there is a real possibility that one day Bridgeport and Stratford will follow through with one of the many plans that have been proposed over the years to “revitalize” the area. It may have only taken 15 years for the wild to return to the beach, but it can always be blinked away with the signing of a contract.

For now, the plants and animals will continue to enjoy the magic of the land as much as their human counterparts once did.