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The Hempstead Plains is a region of central Long Island in New York state in what is now Nassau County. It was once an open expanse of native grassland estimated to once extend to about . It was separated from the North Shore of Long Island by the Harbor Hill Moraine, later approximately the route of Route 25. The modern Hempstead Turnpike approximately traces the separation of the plain from the South Shore of Long Island. The east-west extent was from somewhat west of the modern Queens, New York City border to slightly beyond the Suffolk County border. The town of Hempstead, now America's most populous civil township, was first settled by Europeans around 1644. Although the settlers were from the English colony of Connecticut, a patent was issued by Dutch New Amsterdam after the settlers had purchased land from the local Native Americans. The town may have been named for either Hemel Hempstead, England, or the city of Heemstede in North Holland. In early US history, the Hempstead Plains region was cited as one of the few natural prairies east of the Allegheny Mountains. Long Island historians George Dade and Frank Strand wrote that it was created by an outwash of glacial sediment more than ten thousand years ago. The result was vast, flat open land.〔(US Geological Survey: Quaternary History of the New York Bight )〕 ==The Plains and the horses== Horse racing in the United States and on the North American continent dates back to the establishment of the Newmarket course on the Salisbury Plains section of the Hempstead Plains of Long Island in 1665. This first racing meet in North America was supervised by New York's colonial governor, Richard Nicolls. The area is now occupied by the present Nassau County region of Greater Westbury and Garden City. The year 1905 saw the opening of Belmont Park on part of the western edge of the Hempstead Plains. Its mile and a half main track is the largest dirt Thoroughbred race course in the world, and it has the sport's largest grandstand. Even for non-jockeys, sports remains a key part of the Hempstead Plains. The South Westbury section of the plains is (appropriately) known as Salisbury, and Nassau County's largest park (more than 800 acres (3 km²)) was established in the region as Salisbury Park in the 1940s, on the site of the former Salisbury Golf Links. The county facility has been known as Eisenhower Park since 1971. Even during the later era of air flight activity on the Hempstead Plains, part of the east section of privately owned Roosevelt Field became Roosevelt Raceway, first a popular auto-racing site and then the pioneering standardbred track in horse racing, from 1940 to its closing in 1988. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Hempstead Plains」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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