Founders Landing

Once known as the Southold Wharf, what is now Founders Landing Park was for many years used by steamships to bring goods to sell and tourists to visit the area. The land was a coal and lumber yard owned by Jonathan B. Terry during the nineteenth century. A busy place, Terry put in a long dock which was used by the Montauk Steamboat line to ferry city residents to the rural east end of Long Island. 

Long and wide, the wharf had a narrow gauge rail road tracks and a handcar to moved goods up and down the wharf to the store houses in the yard. The local farms also used the dock to transport their vegetables up to New York City and Connecticut. 

The Steamboat Company was eventually acquired by the Long Island Railroad. The railroad also acquired the Southold wharf.  By the turn of the century, the wharf was falling into disrepair and the LIRR rather than invest in the wharf decided to close it. 

The Ladies Village Improvement Society bought the land in 1906 from the Long Island Railroad and gave it to the Town of Southold. The following year, 1907, the Town Board declared the land a park, thus creating the first park in Southold. The stone pillars were added in 1915 as a memorial to the Europeans who came to the area.

The community building was also added to the property in 1915 when the original warehouse on the site burned down during a renovation. In 1954 the dock was in an advance state of disrepair that it was demolished by the Town and was never replaced. .  

Antiquities, Society for the Preservation of Long Island's. Historic House Inventory - Southold Town. Survey for New York State , unpublished, 1976-1987.

Fleming, Geoffrey K. Images of America Southold. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2004.

Prince, Helen W. Descendants of Captain John Prince. Southold, New York: Privately Published, 1983.

"Town Historian's Files." Town Historian's Office, Southold, New York , n.d.