Anthrax Island

I spent one of my first summers as a New Yorker just outside the city in Montauk, one of the villages surrounding Long Island's Hamptons.  Just off the coast of Montauk is one of the country's more mysterious locations.  The Plum Island Animal Disease Center occupies a 3 by 1 mile island, which is replete with its own fire department, power plant, water treatment plant, and, of course security.  The island, once used to protect New York City in the Spanish-American war at the turn of the 19th century, became a biological-weapons and animal disease research laboratory after WWII.  It is currently owned by the Dept. of Homeland Security.

Plum Island- NW of Long Island

Personnel are ferried to and from the island by armed security officers, and the public are not welcome.  Before entering the island, the personnel must strip naked and put on plastic clothing.  No animal is allowed to leave the island alive and any animal on the island is killed if it comes on-shore. According to a 2002 Wall Street Journal article, freezers on the island contain live polio, Rift Valley Fever, and a host of other deadly diseases.  Plum Island's stated objective is to study diseases communicated between man and animals, but many suspect the laboratory's research goes much deeper.  In 2008, suspected Al Qaeda terrorist Aafia Siddiqui was captured in Afghanistan with a liter of Cyanide in her purse and a list of potential US targets.  Plum Island was included on that list.


"Montauk monster" washed ashore in 2008


The island has been the subject of many conspiracy theories.  Some believe Lyme disease originated on the island and was communicated by accident to nearby Lyme, Connecticut where it spread to the mainland.  Separately, many believe the island has been the source for genetically mutated animals, including what has been dubbed the "Montauk monster," a beastly looking creature that washed on Montauk's shore in July 2008 and horrified three beach-goers.  The mystery has never been solved, although some scientists contend the animal is merely a raccoon or a turtle.  In the 1989 film Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal Lecter is offered vacation time on "Plum Island Animal Disease Center" if he cooperates.  Pausing, he mocks the island by calling it, "Anthrax Island."

 

Laying Grand Plans

There's something about the libraries around Gramercy Park that I like.  Looking through the big windows of the houses facing the park, you can almost feel the ghosts of their present owners- sipping coffee and reading the news in front of a glowing fire.  A second floor library on the north side of the park played host to a series of significant meetings in the mid 1850s.  The townhome, with its elegant library, belonged to Cyrus Field, a paper manufacturing tycoon who retired at 34 after acquiring a small fortune of $250,000.

Cyrus Field



Field had two prominent neighbors: Samuel Morse, telegraphy pioneer and inventor of Morse code, to the north and Peter Cooper, designer of the steam locomotive and once presidential candidate, to the east.  In the mid 1850s, Field, Cooper, Morse, and several other investors began meeting in Field's second floor library to discuss plans for the first Atlantic telegraph.

Field had become obsessed with the idea since financing the laying of telegraph wires in Newfoundland (northeast Canada in 1854).  The idea of laying communication wires under the sea was daunting-given 2500 miles separated Newfoundland and England-but the Field was devoted to the task.  In the 1850s, the only way to communicate a letter over the Atlantic was by sea, which took approximately 10 days.  Telegraph wires would allow for nearly instantaneous communication.  Under Field's vision, on August 7, 1857 two steamships left Newfoundland and Liverpool. 


Marker at what is left of Field's former home (21st and Lex)



After a catastrophic start that included numerous broken cables, storms, etc., the two ships met in the middle of the Atlantic in 1858 and the two wires were spliced together.  Queen Victoria of England sent the first trans-Atlantic communication to President Buchanan in 1858.  To read an 1858 New York Times Article on Field's heroic feat, click here.  Field's success was short-lived.  The communication broke in 1858, and Field, once a hero, was now viewed as a fraud.  According to the book Gramercy Park: An American Bloomsbury, grown men turned their backs when Field came near. 

After 7 years and many failed attempts, the telegraphy wires were finally fully operational and Field was vindicated in the plans he, Morse, Cooper, and other laid years before in his second floor library.  At a benefit in his honor at New York's Chamber of Commerce, Peter Cooper toasted his friend with the now famous line, "God rewards patient industry."