Opening from On This Site - Native Long Island

Hempstead Plains Preserve: Land and the Commons

The prairie remnant at Nassau Community College connects conservation with the history of Native and Black Long Islanders’ access to the Hempstead commons. The remaining prairie makes the history of the commons tangible. Learning who depended on this land, and who lost access to it, adds a human history to the work of protecting its grasses and wildlife. Hempstead Plains Preserve at Nassau Community College protects a surviving prairie landscape amid roads, parking lots, and development. Friends of Hempstead Plains maintains the habitat and provides research and education programs. 1 In a 2025 Stony Brook University lecture, historian Jennifer L. Anderson described how Native and Black Long Islanders relied on the wider Hempstead commons for grazing and other resources despite exclusion from formal land ownership. Nineteenth-century enclosure and land sales restricted those livelihoods....