Coastal Insurance in East Hampton Village and Amagansett

East Hampton Village and Amagansett: One Coastline, Two Founding Stories

East Hampton Village was established in 1648, when Puritan settlers laid out plantations in New England fashion around a wide common, today's Main Street area, on the plain north of Hook Pond. Home lots of 8 to 12 acres flanked that common, and the surrounding farmland was divided into the Eastern Plain, running from Egypt Lane to Cross Highway, the Great Plain, between Hook Pond and Lily Pond, and the Little Plain, between Lily Pond and Georgica Pond. Historic structures from that era still stand, including Hook Mill, Gardiner Windmill, and the Home Sweet Home house, restored under the direction of Historic District Consultant Robert J. Hefner. In the final quarter of the 1800s, artists discovered the area's agrarian landscape and sparked a summer-colony boom: modest shingled cottages rose near Ocean Avenue and Lily Pond Lane on the Great Plain, while the Eastern Plain hosted sizable estates by the early 1900s, the beginning of East Hampton's long identity as a wealthy summer colony.

Amagansett was settled in 1680, its name derived from a Montaukett-language phrase meaning "place of good water," by families including the Bakers, Conklins, and Barneses, along with Dutch brothers Abraham and Jacob Schellinger, who arrived between 1680 and 1690. In the late 19th century, Procter & Gamble executives established the Devon Colony there, an exclusive enclave built around generational legacy and understated wealth rather than public display, a genuinely distinct old-money-discretion identity, and its properties still rarely enter the public real estate market. Two settlements, two founding centuries, two different relationships to wealth and display, but the same open Atlantic coastline on one side and the same insurance questions that come with it.

Amagansett's Own History Confirms This Is Genuinely Open Ocean Coastline

Shortly after midnight on June 13, 1942, four Nazi saboteurs landed by German U-boat on the beach near Amagansett, part of Operation Pastorius, carrying explosives and incendiaries: George John Dasch, 39 and the group's leader, Ernest Peter Burger, 36, Heinrich Harm Heinck, 35, and Richard Quirin, 34. After burying their equipment and uniforms on the beach, an unarmed Coast Guard patrolman spotted the group; offered a bribe, he accepted it but reported the incident anyway, and the four escaped to New York City by train.

Dasch had second thoughts about the plan and contacted the FBI on June 14, identifying himself as "Pastorius," and was taken into custody on June 19 after meeting with agents in Washington; his cooperation led to the arrest of the other three Long Island members by June 20. All eight saboteurs, this four-man team plus a second, separate team that landed in Florida, faced a military trial. Six were executed at the District of Columbia Jail on August 8, 1942; Dasch's sentence was commuted to 30 years and Burger's to life imprisonment. That outcome is settled, decided history, not an open question, and it is set out here for one reason relevant to insurance: a fully loaded U-boat was able to put four men ashore on this exact beach, undetected, on a dark night, which is about as direct a piece of documented evidence as exists that this shoreline is genuinely open Atlantic coast, not a sheltered or marginal edge case for flood-zone purposes.

Devon Colony Discretion Does Not Change the Physical Exposure

The Devon Colony's defining feature is privacy: its Procter & Gamble-executive founders built it around generational legacy rather than public display, and its homes still rarely trade on the open market, which keeps current pricing largely undisclosed. That discretion is real, but it has no bearing on flood physics. A home's actual coastal exposure is set by its elevation, its distance from the ocean or bay, and its FEMA flood-zone designation, not by how visible or discreet its ownership is. A Devon Colony property and a more publicly listed East Hampton Village or Amagansett home facing the same stretch of water are subject to the same category of flood-insurance questions, even if only one of them ever shows up in a public listing.

How NFIP Coverage and FEMA Flood Zones Generally Work Here

Oceanfront and bay-facing property across East Hampton Village and Amagansett sits within the kind of coastline that FEMA maps into flood zones, designations such as AE or VE that describe base flood elevation and, in VE zones, added wave-action risk. The National Flood Insurance Program, administered by FEMA, is the primary source of flood coverage in markets like this one, and it is a separate policy from standard homeowners insurance, which typically excludes flood damage entirely. In general, NFIP eligibility and pricing depend on a property's mapped flood zone, its elevation relative to base flood elevation, its construction type and year built, and, in some communities, a Community Rating System discount tied to community-wide floodplain-management practices.

None of those figures, meaning no specific flood-zone letter, no specific base-flood-elevation number, no Community Rating System discount percentage, and no current premium, was confirmed for any East Hampton Village or Amagansett address in the research behind this page, and none is invented here. The honest starting point for a specific property, whether it sits near the Devon Colony, along Amagansett's open beach, or on the Eastern Plain estates above East Hampton Village, is FEMA's Flood Map Service Center, which allows an address-level flood-zone lookup, followed by a real quote from a licensed insurance broker who works this part of the South Fork.

A Fast-Growing, Older, and Likely Heavily Seasonal Population

The Town of East Hampton, which encompasses East Hampton Village, Amagansett hamlet, and other areas, had a 2020 census population of 28,385, up from 21,457 in 2010, with a July 2025 estimate of 29,400, a 3.7% increase from April 2020, and a town-wide population density of 381.9 people per square mile as of 2020.

East Hampton Village itself is smaller and estimated separately: a 2024 population estimate of 1,297 and a 2026 projected estimate of 1,553, figures that come from third-party estimates rather than confirmed Census figures at the village level for those specific years, alongside a reported 49.3% population change from 2019 to 2024, an annual rate of 9.9% by the same source. The village's 2024 median household income was estimated at $106,250, its poverty rate among families at 3.4%, its median age at 57.5 years, and its race and ethnicity breakdown at 68.5% White, 25.8% Hispanic, and 2.6% two or more races. No official Census Bureau hamlet-level population figure specific to Amagansett was found in this research, only these Town-wide and Village-level figures. A high median age paired with reported rapid population swings is consistent with a market where a meaningful share of homes are used seasonally rather than year-round, and occupancy pattern is exactly the kind of detail a licensed broker will ask about when quoting flood and homeowners coverage together, since it affects both eligibility and price.

What This Page Will Not Guess: Premiums, Flood Zones, and CRS Discounts

This page will not state a specific current flood-insurance premium for any East Hampton Village or Amagansett property. It will not assign a FEMA flood-zone letter, such as AE or VE, to any parcel here, and it will not state a National Flood Insurance Program Community Rating System discount percentage, because none of those figures was independently confirmed in the research behind this page. No specific current home price, property-tax rate, or windstorm-coverage premium is stated here either, for the same reason.

Nothing on this page is insurance, legal, or financial advice. It lays out what is documented about East Hampton Village's 1648 founding and summer-colony growth, Amagansett's 1680 settlement and Devon Colony history, and the historically confirmed 1942 Operation Pastorius landing, alongside a general, honest account of how NFIP flood coverage and FEMA flood zones work in a coastal market like this one, so a prospective buyer knows which questions still need a direct answer from FEMA's Flood Map Service Center and a licensed insurance broker before making an offer on a specific property.