Liberty Island (New York, USA)

Liberty Island is a federally owned island in Upper New York Bay in the United States, best known as the location of the Statue of Liberty. The island is an exclave of the New York City borough of Manhattan, surrounded by the waters of Jersey City, New Jersey. Long known as Bedloe’s Island, it was renamed by an act of the United States Congress in 1956.

Liberty Island (New York, États-Unis)

At the time of European colonization of the Hudson River estuary in the mid-17th century, much of the west side of Upper New York Bay contained large tidal flats which hosted vast oyster beds, a major source of food for the Lenape native people who lived there at the time. Several islands were not completely submerged at high tide. Three of them (later known as Bedloe’s/Love/Liberty, Ellis, and Black Tom) were given the name Oyster Islands (Oester Eilanden) by the Dutch settlers of New Netherland, the first European colony in the Mid-Atlantic states.