Achtervelt (later Amersfoort) and purchased around Jamaica Bay. Amersfoort was centered around the present-day intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Flatlands Avenue. The Dutch also founded a trading post on Bergen Island, which they renamed "Mentelaer's Island". Ownership of Bergen Island was granted to John Underhill in 1646, and Underhill soon sold the property to others. New Netherland became British New York in 1664, and Amersfoort was renamed Flatlands. Bergen Island, as well as nearby Mill Island and Barren Island, were part of the Town of Flatlands. A settler named Elbert Elbertse bought Bergen Island in 1665, and by the 1670s, all three islands were leased by Elbertse. When he died in 1686, he bequeathed of the island to his son. The island was known as "Winnipague" through the 18th century. By the turn of the century, it had been renamed for Hans Hansen Bergen, an early Norwegian or Dutch settler of New Netherland. He lived in the Bergen House, which was built sometime before 1800. One story has it that Bergen's house was hit by British bombs during the American Revolutionary War, but this is not supported by documentation. Another rumor, that the American spy Nathan Hale was executed near or on Bergen Island, is also refuted by other evidence. By the 1850s, Cornelius Bergen owned a farm on the island along the Jamaica Bay coast. However, Bergen Island remained largely undeveloped until the end of the century. According to an 1870 map, John C. Bergen owned most of the island, which only had two structures and a dirt road. Amusement park In the late 1880s, vaudeville theater manager Percy G. Williams partnered with Thomas Adams, the chewing gum magnate, to buy of marshland on Bergen Island. The island was sold to the Germania Real Estate and Improvement Company in 1892. It quickly laid out streets between Avenues T and Z, east of present-day East 70th Street. Williams and Adams had meant to construct housing, but instead decided to emulate the successful Coney Island resort further west. They converted Bergen Island into a resort, which was connected to the rest of the city by the Flatbush Avenue streetcar route (now the B41 bus). The resort opened in 1893 with a dance hall, concessions, rides and a pier. The Flatbush Avenue streetcar to Bergen Beach started operating in May 1896. The coast of Bergen Island, and the park itself, came to