Beginnings: As its name implies, Plainedge is located at the edge of the former Hempstead Plains, the vast prairie left behind in central Nassau County after the glaciers retreated. The area was purchased in several sections from 1688 to 1699 from the Marsapeque Indians by English settlers Thomas Powell and William Frost. The land was used mostly as pasture for cattle at first, and later, by 1800, as hay farms. In the mid-1800s, as poultry-raising became profitable, thousands of turkeys covered the fields. The end of the century saw farmers planting cabbage for sauerkraut and cucumbers for pickles, but those crops were abandoned in the early 1900s because of blight. A similar fate awaited the replacement crop, potatoes, in the 1940s.

Turning Point: The failure of the potato crop was less traumatic for farmers in the Plainedge area, because the real estate boom caused by servicemen returning from World War II made their land valuable for something else - houses and shopping centers. By 1960, there were more than 6,000 homes in Plainedge, where previously there had been only a handful.

Is It a Place? Plainedge is one of the few communities on Long Island that does not exist as far as the postal service is concerned. Although its school district dates to the early 1800s and it has had a library for more than three decades, it still does not rate a post office (or a fire department, for that matter). Plainedge is split into the zip codes that cover Bethpage, Massapequa, Seaford and Farmingdale.

Where to Find More: The local history file at the Plainedge Public Library.