Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Staten Island
Ben’s Place of the Week

Staten Island

Coordinates: 54 40 S 64 30 W

Area: 209 sq. mi. (541 sq. km)

Atlas_1

Mention Staten Island and most people will conjure images of the lower Manhattan skyline, or maybe the long, graceful curve of the massive suspension bridge linking it to Brooklyn. Fewer think of goat herders, seal hunters, and the cold, humid climate at the opposite end of the Atlantic. And yet in name, the more famous Staten of New York has a twin, larger in size but much smaller in population, just to the east of South America’s southernmost tip. Part of the sprawling Tierra del Fuego archipelago, Isla de los Estados, as the island is known in Argentina, lies less than 100 miles from the entrance to the Beagle Channel, a waterway that links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and serves as an alternate route for sailors wishing to avoid Cape Horn’s rougher seas.


Ben Keene is the editor of Oxford Atlas of the World. Check out some of his previous places of the week.

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