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Staten Island ( of New York City . Situated on an Eponymous island, Staten Island is the most geographically separate and least populated of the five boroughs. The Borough of Staten Island is , 2006 With a population of about 477,377, Staten Island is sometimes called "the forgotten borough," as it is less well-known than other boroughs, namely Manhattan , Brooklyn , Queens and The Bronx . While Staten Island may not have the claim to fame of other boroughs, the Staten Island Ferry is a large tourist attraction and thus provides out-of-towners with some frame of reference for Staten Island. It is the third largest borough in area at 59 sq. mi. (approx. 153 km&2). Staten Island is considered the most suburban of the five boroughs of New York City. The North Shore of the island (especially neighborhoods of St. George, Tompkinsville, and Stapleton) is the most urban, with the South Shore accommodating more suburban-style residential neighborhoods. Historically, the central and southern sections of the island were once dominated by dairy and poultry farms, the last of which disappeared in the 20th Century. The borough's steady rise in population since the opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge has added to a sharp increase in traffic. To date, Staten Island only has one MTA train line, which is essentially a Railroad Older Than The Verrazano Narrows Bridge (running North-South along the Eastern side), and MTA bus service. Staten Island has also historically been known for the Fresh Kills Landfill , the city of New York's former repository of trash. The landfill's closure was imminent at the turn of the millennium, but Fresh Kills became the home of the debris from Ground Zero following 9/11 . The landfill was officially closed in 2001, Fresh Kills: Landfill to close and there is already a plan in place to revitalize the land for park use in the years ahead. HISTORY The bedrock of the island is a diabase formed during the volcanic eruptions that created much of the bedrock of northern New Jersey, including the New Jersey Palisades, approximately 200 million years ago. As an island, Staten Island was formed in the wake of the last Ice Age . In the late Pleistocene between 20,000 and 14,000 years ago, the Ice Sheet that covered northeastern North America reached to as far south as present day New York City, to a depth of approximately the same height as the Empire State Building . At one point, during its maximum reach, the ice sheet precisely ended at the center of present day Staten Island, forming a Terminal Moraine on the existing diabase sill. The central moraine of the island is sometimes called the Serpentine ridge because it contains large amounts of that particular mineral. At the retreat of the ice sheet, Staten Island was connected by land to Long Island because The Narrows had not yet formed. Geologist s' reckonings of the course of the Hudson River have placed it alternatively through the present course of the Raritan River , south of the island, or through present-day Flushing Bay and Jamaica Bay . As in much of North America, human habitation appeared in the island fairly rapidly after the retreat of the ice sheet. Archaeologist s have recovered tool evidence of Clovis Culture activity dating from approximately 14,000 years ago. The island was probably abandoned later, possibly because of the Extinction of large Mammal s on the island. Evidence of the first permanent American Indians settlements and agriculture date from about 5,000 years ago (Jackson, 1995). In the Sixteenth Century , the island was part of a larger area known as Lenapehoking that was inhabited by the Lenape , an Algonquian American Indians people also called the Delaware. The band that occupied the southern part of the island was called the Raritan . To the Lenape, the island was called ''Aquehonga Manacknong'' and ''Eghquaons'' (Jackson, 1995). The island was laced with foot trails, one of which followed the south side of the ridge near the course of present day Richmond Road and Amboy Road. The Lenape did not live in fixed encampments, but moved seasonally, using Slash And Burn agriculture. The staples of their diet included Shellfish , including the Oyster s that are native to both Upper New York Bay and Lower New York Bay . Staten Island The first recorded European contact with the island was in 1524 by Giovanni Da Verrazzano , who sailed through The Narrows . In 1609, Henry Hudson established Dutch trade in the area and named the island ''Staaten Eylandt'' after the ''Staten-Generaal'' , the Dutch parliament. Although the first Dutch settlement of the New Netherland s colony was made on nearby Manhattan in 1620, ''Staaten Eylandt'' remained uncolonized by the Dutch for many decades. From 1639 to 1655, the Dutch made three separate attempts to establish a permanent settlement on the island, but each time the settlement was destroyed in the conflicts between the Dutch and the local tribes. In 1661, the first permanent Dutch settlement was established at ''Oude Dorp'' ( Dutch for "Old Town"),1 just south of The Narrows near ''South Beach'', by a small group of Dutch Walloon and Huguenot families. Richmond County At the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War in 1667, the Dutch ceded New Netherlands colony to England in the Treaty Of Breda , and what was now Anglicized as ''Staten Island'' became part of the new English Colony Of New York . In 1670, the Native Americans ceded all claims to Staten Island to the English in a deed to Gov. Francis Lovelace . In 1671, in order to encourage an expansion of the Dutch settlements, the English resurveyed Oude Dorp (which became known as ''Old Town'') and expanded the lots along the shore to the south. These lots were settled primarily by Dutch and became known as ''Nieuwe Dorp'' (meaning "New Village"), which later became anglicized as New Dorp .
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