The New York Times: Truck Beach Was For Locals. Then the Oceanfront Homes Arrived

For as long as Nathaniel Miller can remember, he has spent every summer at a beach in Napeague, a once-remote strip of marsh, pine forest and dunes sandwiched between Amagansett and Montauk in the Hamptons.

In the 1980s, the Miller family would drive their truck right onto the beach. While his father fished and his mother sunbathed, Mr. Miller and his two siblings would frolic in the surf. At some point, the family befriended a doctor who owned an oceanfront home with a saltwater swimming pool. As Mr. Miller remembers it, whatever his father caught ended up in the pool until it was time to take it home and cook it for dinner.

Back then, that 4,000-foot-long stretch of Napeague (which rhymes with fatigue) was one of the least developed areas in the Town of East Hampton. The construction boom in the area, initially fueled by Wall Street bonuses, was just beginning.