Unbeknownst to most of the city\'s inhabitants, a rural community of garbage workers once existed on a now-vanished island in New York City.
Barren Islanders built businesses, fought f.
They turned the waste into useful industrial products until their eviction by Robert Moses, in the name of progress, in 1936.
Barren Island was a swampy speck in Jamaica Bay where a motley group of new immigrants and African Americans quietly processed mountains of garbage and dead animals starting in the 1850s.
Unbeknownst to most of the city\'s inhabitants, a rural community of garbage workers once existed on a now-vanished island in New York City