The Lost Beach Resort Hiding Under a New Jersey Bridge | SAVE HIGHLAND BEACH

Описание: Every summer, hundreds of thousands of people drive onto Sandy Hook without knowing that directly beneath the bridge lies the last structure of the Jersey Shore’s first beach resort.

In 1887, a 25-year-old woodworker’s son named William Sandlass leased five acres of sand on the narrowest strip of the Sandy Hook peninsula — ocean on one side, river on the other, barely 150 yards between them. He won the land lease at the cards table. He turned that sand into Highland Beach: the first beach resort on the Jersey Shore.

For seventy-five summers, trains and steamboats brought twenty thousand visitors a day to swim, ride the roller coaster, dance in the Bamboo Room, and eat the dollar Shrewsbury dinner.

Three generations of one family ran it all. Through storms that ripped the beach in half. Through Prohibition. Through two World Wars.

They didn’t lose it to the ocean. They lost it to the government. In 1962, the State of New Jersey seized Highland Beach by eminent domain. $350,000 for seventy-five years of a family’s life. They tore everything down — except one house.

Built from the timbers of that roller coaster in 1893. Still standing. And the National Park Service wants to demolish it.

Highland Beach: The Lost Resort is a multi-episode documentary series from Above the Hook. This is the story that built the Shore.

Our goal? SAVE HIGHLAND BEACH

📖 Based on research and i collaboration with Susan Sandlass Gardiner, “Sandy Hook’s Lost Highland Beach Resort” (Arcadia Publishing, 2020); Chris Brenner, “Destinations Past: Highland Beach” (2016); NPS archival records; Blackie Smith, Sean Moran, and the Jersey Coast Heritage Museum.

🏛️ Support the preservation of the Sandlass House: jchmorg.me

📺 Subscribe to Above the Hook — Episode 1 coming soon

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