Bethpage High School

Bethpage has a long history dating back several centuries. It was originally inhabited by Native Americans, then became a farming village settled by Quakers, then it played a central role in aviation and aerospace history and is now a high-tech center with several major corporations calling it home. Originally several Native American groups were in... volved with the Bethpage area prior to its settlement by Quakers. The Massapequa, Secatog, and Matinecock all roamed the area and had some claim to it. In 1695, Thomas Powell, a devout Quaker, bought the land from Native Americans. He paid 140 sterling pounds. Powell called his land Bethpage (which means "house of figs") because there was a place in the Bible in between Jericho and Jerusalem named "Bethphage". His land was situated between the settlement of Jericho and what had previously been referred to as Jerusalem (now Wantagh). Even though Thomas Powell named his land Bethpage, the people who eventually moved here in the 1850's pressured the village to change its name to Central Park. Land speculators thought that by naming the village Central Park, more people would want to move here. This was before New York City built its famous park and so in 1857 the name was officially changed to Central Park. It was changed back to Bethpage in 1936 at the request of residents who felt overshadowed by the more famous Central Park. Residents of the Bethpage area went to school at the Bedelltown School built at the corner of Broadway and Plainview Roads in 1858. The second Bedelltown School was built on property that would now be the Bethpage High School football field. This one room building was built in the 1890's. In 1912, the much larger Powell Avenue school was built on the current site of the Bethpage Public Library (which was built in 1963 and remodeled in 1995). In 1950, the Broadway School (now the John F. Kennedy Middle School) was constructed on land that in earlier years was used for farming. This first served as the high school and junior high school. Prior to ...Read More