11. Execution Rocks Lighthouse

Just past Hart Island and Stepping Stones Lighthouse is Execution Rocks (where we’re taking readers on an Untapped Cities tour to this Saturday!). ccording to popular lore (and still claimed by the Travel Channel), Execution Rocks was named because of the executions that took place there under the British authorities before the American Revolution, who chained prisoners to the rocks at low tide to be drowned. There is no historical evidence that this is true, though a serial killer claimed to have done some of his macabre deeds near the island in 1920. The official history of the island’s naming refers to the dangerous passage for ships around the rocks at low tide.