High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Jamaica Bay is a lagoon that lies in the boundary of New York City, and is adjacent to John F. Kennedy International Airport. Jamaica Bay is located on the southwestern tip of Long Island in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, New York City, and the town of Hempstead, New York/hamlet of Inwood. The bay connects with Lower New York Bay to the west through Rockaway Inlet and is the westernmost of the coastal lagoons on the south shore of Long Island. Maps of the city as late as 1910 identify the bay as Grassy Bay. Jamaica Bay is located adjacent to the confluence of the New York Bight and New York Bay, and is at the turning point of the primarily east-west oriented coastline of New England and Long Island and the north-south oriented coastline of the mid-Atlantic coast. The name derives from "Jameco", a corruption of a word in one of the Lenape languages, spoken by the Native Americans who oncelived in the area.