Bethpage

Bethpage (LIRR station)

Bethpage Station is a station along the Main Line of the Long Island Rail Road. It is located at Stewart Avenue and Jackson Avenue, in Bethpage, New York, and serves Ronkonkoma Branch trains. Trains that travel along the Central Branch also use these tracks, but none stop here.

History

Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) tracks were completed on the present line in 1841. At first trains did not stop here, Bethpage appearing only as a notation ("late Bethpage") associated with the Farmingdale station to the east. By 1854, the LIRR stopped at a local station called Jerusalem Station. A local post office opened January 29, 1857, with the name Jerusalem Station. LIRR schedules also referred to the station as simply Jerusalem. In 1867, the residents voted to change the name of the local post office to Central Park, and both that and Jerusalem appeared on LIRR schedules until 1936. The station and the post office were renamed Bethpage on October 1, 1936. In 1959, the station burned down and was replaced. Service was electrified in 1987.

Bethpage, New York

Bethpage is a hamlet located on Long Island within the Town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County, New York, United States, as well as a census-designated place (CDP) with borders slightly different from those of the hamlet. The CDP's population was 16,429 at the 2010 United States Census.

The area is served by the Bethpage Post Office, ZIP code 11714, whose boundaries are slightly different from that of the CDP. The area is also served by the Bethpage Union Free School District, the boundaries of which include parts of some surrounding hamlets, including parts of Old Bethpage, Plainview, and Plainedge. The Town of Hempstead, on its website, includes a small part of Bethpage hamlet that is in the Levittown census-designated place.

History

The name Bethpage comes from the Quaker Thomas Powell, who named the area after the Biblical town Bethphage, which was between Jericho and Jerusalem in the Holy Land. Present-day Bethpage was part of the 1695 Bethpage Purchase. An early name for the northern section of present-day Bethpage was Bedelltown, a name that appeared on maps at least as late as 1906.