HISTORY OF SEASIDE HEIGHTS NJ

Seaside Heights is one of the beach communities on the Barnegat Peninsula.  Its land area is about a half square mile and it is located between Seaside Park to the south and the Ortley Beach of Dover Township to the north.

In the early years of the 1900s, a land development company envisioned Seaside Heights as a resort and promoted it to Philadelphia area residents as an ideal location to build summer homes.  So that prospective buyers could see the lots available (a 40-foot beachfront lot cost only $100.00) as well as breathe the cool, refreshing ocean air, the development company began running train excursions in 1909 and continued them seasonally for several years.

In 1913, Seaside Heights was incorporated as a borough formed from sections of Berkeley and Dover townships.

Investor and manufacturer Christian Hiering played a key role in nourishing this newborn borough.  In 1913, Hiering started the Barnegat Power and Cold Storage Company bringing electricity to Seaside Heights for the first time.

On December 1, 1915, the first toll bridge was opened across Barnegat Bay, linking Seaside Heights with Toms River and the mainland.  The bridge was built by the Island Heights and Seaside Heights Bridge Company at a cost of $153,477.90.  The tolls varied; a horse and buggy was 25¢ - with extra persons an additional 10¢, a car and driver cost 40¢ - with additional persons an additional 15¢, horses, cattle, pigs and sheep cost 10¢ each.  Children under 5 were allowed to cross free of charge.

Now visitors had more convenient access without having to take a boat or travel by train on the railroad bridge built in 1881.

By this time, there were now two new hotels in Seaside Heights: the Sheridan Inn and the Sumner Hotel.  The Seaside Heights Amusement Company announced plans to build a theater and carousel along with billiard, pool and shuffleboard rooms.

Before World War I, an amusement park opened between Seaside Heights and Seaside Park.  The two communities were to share the benefits for the remainder of the 1900s.

So the seeds were planted that would flourish into New Jersey's "Family Fun and Sun Resort," claiming Seaside Heights as the greatest concentration of games and amusement rides in the world!

But it took a lot of persistence.  The first three blocks of boardwalk took four years to build back in 1917.  Four decades later, in 1955, a major boardwalk fire destroyed a substantial number of amusements including the original carousel that dated back to 1917.  Today's 17-block, mile-long boardwalk is enjoyed by the tens of thousands who visit each week in season.

Strolling along the boardwalk was a success from the beginning.  It's reported that in 1917 the Pennsylvania Railroad had to send a special 12-car train to get Philadelphia visitors back home.

Today's day-trippers flood in from North Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania via freeways and toll roads all feeding into the $6 million Thomas A. Mathis Bridge, which replaced the narrow wooden bridge back in 1950.  The efforts to get the new bridge were spearheaded by determined Seaside Heights residents, including Joseph Stanley Tunney who served the community as mayor for nearly 25 years.  (It is for Tunney that a second bridge, one that now carries visitors from the shore back to the mainland, was named.)

It was also Tunney who led the fight for boardwalk expansion back in the 1940s.  He knew it was the key to community growth.  As a result of lengthening the boardwalk along the entire oceanfront, new homes, hotels and motels were built.  Summer residents, renters and vacationers followed.

Fun-seeking visitors come from beyond the metropolitan NY-NJ and Philadelphia areas to spend a day, week or more enjoying the entertainment-filled boardwalk, the amusement piers, water park and the spectrum of ocean and bay swimming, boating, fishing, crabbing and other water sports.  And of course, the hand-held foods as well as the fine restaurants.  It's all centered in Seaside Heights.