Long Island
The most populous island in the United States
Long Island is a large glacial island extending about 120 miles east from New York Harbor into the Atlantic, and the most populous island in the United States - home to roughly 8 million people, more than any individual U.S. state except a handful. Its western end holds the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, while Nassau and Suffolk counties to the east form the classic American suburbs and, finally, the beach resorts of the Hamptons and Montauk.
Shaped by Ice Age glaciers, the island is built largely of glacial moraine and outwash, giving it a hilly spine, sandy southern beaches like Jones Beach and Fire Island, and the rocky northern shore along Long Island Sound. Once a landscape of farms, fishing villages, and potato fields, it became a symbol of postwar suburbia with the building of Levittown, and remains one of the most densely settled and economically powerful islands in the world.