Ronkonkoma

Lake Ronkonkoma is a freshwater lake in Ronkonkoma. It is a kettle lake formed by retreating glaciers and is the largest freshwater lake on Long Island. It has a circumference of about 2 miles and is 0.65 miles across, on average. The lake is owned by the Town of Islip under the terms of the Nicolls Patent. The land around it is controlled by three town governments: Smithtown, Islip and Brookhaven. The separation originated because three different Native American communities claimed lands on different shores, and these claims continued when the tribes gave separate deeds to the land under their control. The name Ronkonkoma comes from an Algonquian expression meaning “boundary fishing-lake” The Indian tribes thought the lake was bottomless because people who had drowned would often just disappear and their bodies were never recovered.

Legend has it that Native American princess Tuskawanta died at the lake in the mid-1600s. The story goes…one winter, she walked across the ice when she met and fell in love with Hugh Birdsall, who lived across the lake. Her father, chief of the Setauket tribe forbade their relationship. Every day for 7 years, she would write letters on pieces of bark and row to the middle of the lake. She would then float the letters across the lake to Hugh. After all those years of being kept apart from her lover…one day, she rowed to the middle of the lake and took her own life. The myth has it that she claims a boy’s life every year to try to find herself a soulmate in death. And the statistics back up this curse. Of all the recorded drownings in the lake…the vast majority have been young males.

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