9. Dead Horse Bay
Just next to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, across from Fort Tilden and the Rockaways, sits Dead Horse Beach, which not only contains the remnants of dead horses but also a plethora of vintage garbage from over a hundred years ago. The landscape is dotted with bottles, among which you can find perfume bottles from the early 1900s, creepy toys, plenty of household knickknacks, decaying boats, and even (reportedly), old handguns. Millstone was also found there, leftover from the Dutch in the 17th century.
Dead Horse Beach functioned as the Brooklyn land dump from around 1850 to 1930 and was dotted with horse-rendering plants from the 1850s through the late 1910s. (Horse-rending is just a nicer-sounding term for what is done with dead horses, and you can still see pieces of horse bone on the beach.) Most of the plants burned down, but one remains amidst the tar. In August 2020, the National Park Service closed the beach area after the presence of radiological contamination was discovered.
