The Navesink Highlands rise steeply from the southern shore of Sandy Hook Bay. They are the first land a ship sees when approaching New York Harbor from the Atlantic — the highest natural coastal elevation between Maine and the Florida Keys. For five centuries, navigators have used these hills as their primary landmark. The Twin Lights of Navesink, perched on the bluff, guided more ships into New York Harbor than any other coastal marker in American history.
Sandy Hook itself is a geological accident of extraordinary consequence. A barrier spit curling northward from the Highlands into Lower New York Bay, it was formed by the drift of sediment from the shore and shaped by five thousand years of Atlantic storms. It creates the sheltered anchorage that made New York the commercial capital of the world.
Giovanni da Verrazzano anchored off these shores in 1524. Henry Hudson described them in his log in 1609. The Sandy Hook Lighthouse has burned without interruption since 1764 — the oldest operating lighthouse in America. During World War II, a network of fire control towers and underwater hydrophone stations operated from this peninsula to detect U-boats in the approaches. The Army only vacated the Hook in 1974.
Most people who live within fifty miles of this place do not know any of this. Above the Hook exists to change that.
