[4][10] Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater, an outdoor arena in the park, is a popular musical and concert venue.

To create the park, huge dredgers brought sand from the bay bottom, eventually raising the island to 12 feet (3.7 m) above sea level.

In the center of a traffic circle that he planned as a terminus for the Wantagh State Parkway, Moses ordered the construction of an Italianate-style water tower to serve as a central feature of the park.

After rejecting a number of submissions by architects for the bathhouses, Moses selected the designs of the young and relatively inexperienced Herbert Magoon.

[14] Robert Moses used low clearances for the bridges over the Southern State Parkway, a major east-west route to Jones Beach.

It was alleged by Robert Caro, author of the Moses biography The Power Broker, that this was done intentionally to prevent poor and minority people from accessing the beach by public bus.

[10] The primary buildings on the Jones Beach site are the two bathhouses (west and east) and the park's large water tower, all built to Moses' specifications.

Jones Beach formerly featured The Boardwalk Cafe, a large restaurant with an expansive ocean view, built in 1966 and demolished in 2004 due to damage from erosion.

[28] The project was stalled for several years due to legal battles over permits required for the restaurant's planned basement,[29] and was eventually cancelled in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

West End 2 is also currently a designated surfing area, which is open to stargazers and fishermen at night and bird watchers and other naturalists by day.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a drive thru testing site was established in the West End 1 parking field, resulting in the area being closed to all recreational activity until further notice.

A significant portion of visitors take the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) to Freeport and then the Nassau Inter-County Express's (NICE) n88X bus to Jones Beach.