ABOUT SEASIDE HEIGHTS

The welcome sign is always out in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. This friendly beach community on the Barnegat Peninsula in Ocean County offers wonderful sites, scenes, and activities for people of all ages and interests. From its beautiful beaches and its mile-long boardwalk filled with many attractions to its magnificent sunrises and sunsets and exhilarating ocean air, Seaside Heights is magnetic.

A community of 3,100 year-round residents, Seaside Heights expands to more than 30,000 in the summer. It's a compact town: almost a mile long and a third of a mile wide with everything within walking distance. And it is conveniently located for day-trippers from New York City, Philadelphia, and Atlantic City.

Community-sponsored events are ongoing in Seaside Heights, where its Business Improvement District is committed to making the town fun, diverse, and walkable, as evidenced by the many family- and visitor-friendly events and activities.

• Seaside Heights borders the Atlantic Ocean to the east and Barnegat Bay to the west.
• In the course of the summer season, our population swells to 25 thousand and welcomes 30-40 thousand visitors on the weekends.
• Our beach attendance based on 1999 Beach Revenues is over 500 thousand guests.
• Combined with our Boardwalk and Nightclub patrons our total visitor count is approximately 2.2 million.
• Seaside Heights is approximately one hour away from the Atlantic City, Philadelphia and New York metropolitan areas.

• 50 million people live within a 3-hour drive time of Seaside Heights.

A History in Brief

In the 1900s, a land development company began a campaign to entice Philadelphia-area residents to build summer homes in Seaside Heights. From 1909 and for several years thereafter, the company offered train trips to the area, where land costs were quite reasonable ($100 for a 40-foot beachfront lot), and the ocean air was invigorating. The combination was irresistible, and the area burgeoned. In 1913, Seaside Heights was incorporated as a borough. That year, investor-manufacturer Christian Hiering established the Barnegat Power and Cold Storage Company, which brought electricity to Seaside Heights.

By 1915, Seaside Heights was well along the way to becoming New Jersey's "Family Fun and Sun Resort." It had two new hotels, and the Seaside Heights Amusement Company had plans to build a theater and carousel, along with billiard, pool, and shuffleboard rooms. An amusement park had recently opened between Seaside Heights and Seaside Park. In late 1915, the first toll bridge (construction cost: $153,477.90) was opened across Barnegat Bay, linking Seaside Heights to Toms River and the mainland. Visitors to the area no longer had to travel there by boat or train.

From 1917, and for four years thereafter, the first three blocks of the boardwalk were built. A major fire in 1955 destroyed it and its many amusements. Today, thousands of visitors stroll along the rebuilt and lengthened (to one mile) boardwalk, the construction of which resulted in the building of new homes, hotels, and motels.