New Jersey's First City

Jersey City / Hoboken Real Estate Ads

Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003

Ship Bottom-Beach Haven-Holgate; unnumbered road.
Ship Bottom to Holgate, 9 m.
Concrete and graveled roadbed.
Summer hotels and tourist houses in the villages, a few open all year.

The road runs through the southern part of Long Beach Island, passing large sea fisheries and a succession of fishing and resort hamlets. A long line of, rugged dunes shelters the fishermen's houses and the summer cottages.

The route branches south from State S40 (see Tour 35) at SHIP BOTTOM, 0 m. (10 alt., 277 pop.) (see Tour 35).

The island narrows as the road leads southward. Sand dunes (L) block the view of the ocean; in the bay (R) the Intracoastal Waterway divides into two channels, marked by buoys and stakes.

BRANT BEACH, 2.3 m. (15 alt., 80 pop.), is a fishing resort within view of both the ocean and bay.

South of Brant Beach the road runs through white, sandy dune-land. The moving sands have often yielded human bones, reminders of bygone wrecks when sailors and passengers were buried wherever their bodies were found. The shifting of sand in the winter gales moves dunes from place to place, covering and uncovering these graves of unknown men and of wooden ships. Nowadays the unclaimed dead are taken to the Masonic plot at Barnegat or to Manahawkin for burial.

BEACH HAVEN CREST, 3.1 m. (20 alt., 111 pop.), is a small town; with a permanent winter population. The Jersey Central Power and Light Station for the island is here. A long narrow arm of the bay reaches up almost to the highway.

BEACH HAVEN TERRACE, 5.4 m. (15 alt., 112 pop.), is a summer resort with year-round residents maintaining attractive frame houses. The old CLEAR VIEW HOTEL, a frame structure on the beach, became something of a local museum in the summer of 1937 when girls from a Philadelphia children's home occupied it and assembled a large collection of shells and botanical specimens from the beach and from swamps on the mainland.

South of this village the highway becomes a graveled road passing scattered summer bungalows. By the roadside are wax myrtle bushes, more commonly known as bayberries. From the purplish-white berries of these evergreens which are 3 to 4 feet high, wax candles are made every fall. Other myrtle bushes here, which do not produce wax, have small hard black berries; their aromatic leaves were, in antiquity, sacred to Venus.

SPRAY BEACH, 5.8 m. (15 alt., 50 pop.), presents Long Beach Island at its narrowest. On the bay side are the SPRAY BEACH YACHT CLUB and several houseboats.

The bay here is part of Little Egg Harbor, originally named Eyren Haven (Dutch, harbor of eggs) by the Dutch, who found eggs of sea birds in great abundance here. During the Revolution the harbor sheltered an American privateer fleet.

At 6.5 m. (L) on the beach is THE BREAKERS, a typical old frame hotel with red-carpeted floors and stairways. Most of the wall space is occupied by an amazing and wholly delightful accumulation of pictures, in-cluding such gems as a chromo of a seductive bathing girl-in a black suit reaching well below the knees – entitled, A Chicken Sand Witch.

BEACH HAVEN, 7.1 m. (7 alt., 760 pop.), with a number of hotels and a half mile of boardwalk, is popular among Philadelphia families and vacationers from other places, having achieved a reputation as a refuge from hay fever. The town has broad streets, busy markets, banking facilities, many handsome cottages, and several large hotels. The best known inn is the NEW HOTEL BALDWIN, a many-turreted frame structure on the beach (L) ; it was built by Matthias W. Baldwin, founder of the Baldwin Locomotive Works. The BEACH HAVEN TUNA CLUB (open), a story-and-a-half building (R) facing the bay, was organized four years ago by a dozen skippers, writers, and rod experts, to promote tuna fishing.

Unique in Little Egg Harbor are the bait boats, a kind of marine market. They cruise in and out among the fishing boats, selling squid, moss bunkers, shedder crabs, and shrimp.

Beach Haven had a pirate thrill some 50 years ago. A little sloop anchored offshore and two men came into the Little Egg Harbor Life Saving Station, where they stayed for supper. Casually they inquired about two local landmarks, the Two Cedars and the old lighthouse nearby, and soon thereafter ostensibly turned in. At dawn the lookout man saw through his telescope two men digging furiously in the sand at a point between the Two Cedars and the old lighthouse. The guardsman aroused the crew; meanwhile the diggers were dragging a huge chest from the hole. When the Life Savers arrived the men were depositing the last gunny sacks on their yawl and were weighing anchor. The ancient iron-bound chest, an old rusty cutlass, a few Spanish coins, and a crumpled, yellow map lay on the ground. To the superintendent of Coast Guard stations at Asbury Park, the cutlass; to the treasure hunters– ?

Bond's Hotel at Beach Haven, torn down 30 years ago, was one of the most noted shore places. Opened in 1851 by a Capt. Thomas Bond, a watchcase maker from Maiden Lane, New York, it was for half a century a luxury hotel for the elite from Pennsylvania and New York. The owner kept a flock of sheep to assure his guests of real spring lamb at all seasons. The dining-room door, covered with the carved names and initials of the "who's who" of its time, is now in the museum of the BEACH HAVEN LIBRARY. Captain Bond, a leader in life-saving, equipped a House of Refuge with the best paraphernalia obtainable for rescue work. On one occasion his men rescued some 400 famished immigrants from the ship Georgia. Guards were necessary to keep them under control while food was being prepared, but not one person was hungry when the passengers left for New York.

HOLGATE, 9 m. (20 alt.), is the southern-most town on the highway, a small group of houses dominated by a Coast Guard station on the bay side (R) and (L) a peculiar BARN (private) with a roof rising into a tall lookout tower. This is a man's playground, as suggested by the forthright name of one roadhouse, "The Liar's Rooster."

At 9.5 m. the pavement ends, with 1.5 miles of uninhabited beach beyond to Beach Haven Inlet at the island's tip. 

Print Edition Now on Sale at Amazon Read Online at Google Book Search