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I couldn't resist passing along parts of this discussion to Adrian Ettlinger,
the author of AniMap and a resident of the NYC area. He responded with the
following dissertation:
 
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        To clear up, especially for Frank Reed and April Carlucci, the geographical
history of the northern end of Manhattan Island:  As April correctly points
out, Inwood is the northern end of the Island.  The part of the mainland that
is within the political boundaries of the Borough of Manhattan is Marble
Hill.  How this came about:  Prior to 1895, the waters of the upper Harlem
River and Spuyten Duyvil Creek were continuous, even at low tide, but
navigable only by small craft and shallow enough at low tide that one could
wade across.  In 1895, the first section of the Harlem Ship Canal was dug,
cutting off the Marble Hill area from Manhattan Island.  When the Borough of
the Bronx was established in 1898, Marble Hill was left in the Borough of
Manhattan, as it had been part of the City of New York for long prior to the
other areas of the mainland, the first of which had been annexed to New York
City only in 1874.  In 1938, the Harlem Ship Canal was straightened at its
western end and this left a small tract of land south of the channel attached
to Manhattan which once had been part of the mainland.  In fact, this tract
had once been part of Westchester County.  This is now parkland adjacent to
Columbia University's athletic complex.
 
        While there might be some legal reasons for classifying certain islands as
part of the mainland, anything that is "a tract of land surrounded by water"
is still, by common usage, an island and not a peninsula.  The City of
Alameda, CA, is as example of a tract that was once a peninsula and was
turned into an island by the digging of a canal.  I suppose I'd have to
concede, however, that no one calls Cape Cod or the Delmarva Peninsula
islands because of the canals across their bases.
 
\end of Adrian's comments/
 
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So.... can someone tell me if the legal definition of an island differs from
the common dictionary definition.
 
Art Lassagne
Gold Bug Historic Maps & Software              [log in to unmask]
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