Wantagh State Parkway

Highway in Nassau County, New York

The Wantagh State Parkway is a 13.33 mile (21 km) controlled access parkway on Long Island, New York, in the United States. It links the Ocean Parkway in Jones Beach State Park with the Northern State Parkway in Westbury. The parkway is located approximately 30 mile (48 km) east of Manhattan and 14 mile (23 km) east of the Nassau–Queens border. One of the earliest Long Island parkways, construction on the Wantagh Parkway began in 1927, with the initial 5 mile (8 km) segment opening two years later as the Jones Beach Causeway, connecting Merrick Road in Wantagh to newly opened Jones Beach State Park. The parkway is inventoried by the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) as New York State Route 908T (NY 908T) – an unsigned reference route.

The Wantagh State Parkway begins at a traffic circle with the Ocean Parkway in Jones Beach State Park just north of the Atlantic Ocean shoreline. The parkway proceeds northward as a six lane freeway, passing several several of the park's parking fields. It then crosses under Bay Parkway and the Detective Betsy Horner Miller Cutrone Memorial Bridge, before bending northeast into an unnumbered interchange with the Bay Parkway. The parkway then widens to eight lanes as it bends northeast through Jones Beach State Park, intersecting with several u turn ramps between directions. As the parkway makes a large bend to the northwest, it gains elevation and narrows to five lanes, and then crosses over Sloop Channel by way of the Sloop Channel Bridge.

The original section of the parkway, known as the Jones Beach Causeway, opened on August 4, 1929, along with Jones Beach State Park, running from Merrick Road in Wantagh to Jones Beach Island. It was built specifically by Robert Moses and the Long Island State Park Commission to enable vehicular access to Jones Beach. The Wantagh Parkway was subsequently extended north to the Southern State Parkway in July 1932.

In February 1937, the Long Island State Park Commission announced the design of an extension of the Wantagh State Parkway north to an interchange with an extended Northern State Parkway in the Incorporated Village of Westbury. This new 9.5 mile (15 km) set of roadway, designated the "Northern–Wantagh State Parkway Extension", saw the Wantagh be extended north from the Southern State Parkway to the extended Northern State – as well and the Northern State to the trumpet interchange with the Wantagh. On April 7, the LISPC announced that bids on the new extensions would open on April 20 for the new project, with the expectation that the erection of all at grade structures associated with the project would be completed by the year's end. On November 20, 1938, the LISPC announced at their headquarters in Babylon that the Wantagh Parkway's extension to the Northern State Parkway would open to traffic a month later. Although the $4.4 million (1938 USD) project was roughly $2.2 million over budget, the construction and opening of the roadway was three months ahead of its slated 1939 completion date. The new roadway would be opened on December 17 and be attended by officials such as Herbert H. Lehman, J. Russell Sprague, Alfred Smith, and Robert Moses. During the December 17 opening ceremony, 300 cars were lined up on the asphalt, which was designed to make night driving much easier over the concrete. Smith cut the ribbon, located on the Northern State Parkway portion of new extension in Westbury, about east of Glen Cove Road. This extension of the Wantagh Parkway would proceed north from the interchange with the Northern State Parkway, soon reaching a cloverleaf interchange with Jericho Turnpike (NY 25). However, while the right of way was purchased for the extension, this extension of NY 135 was never constructed. Freeway stubs exist at the south end of the Seaford–Oyster Bay Expressway for this unbuilt extension.