From the nineteenth century to the twentieth century, the area has been used in a variety of ways, including manufacturing fertilizer from the remains of dead animals, producing
fish oil from the
menhaden caught in the bay, and more recently a landfill for the disposal of New York City’s garbage. Periodic clogging by carcasses from the adjacent glue factory with a 200 foot chimney gave the bay its name. A millstone used to grind
horse bones can still be found along the Millstone trail. In 1926, much of the salt marsh surrounding Dead Horse Bay and the rest of Barren Island were pumped with sand from
Jamaica Bay. In the 1950s, urban planner
Robert Moses attempted to expand the now-peninsula to the west using garbage covered by topsoil, but the layer of soil eroded, and garbage can be seen on the coast during low tide. This coast contains many exposed broken glass bottles and other
non-biodegradable material. In August 2020, the
National Park Service announced that Dead Horse Bay would be closed indefinitely because of the presence of
radiological contamination. The NPS said at the time that the cleanup could last several years. The contamination was identified as having come from two deck markers, a type of
Radium-226 or
Strontium-90 based
radioluminescent device used by the US military, though the risk of radiological exposure was considered low. ==Current use==