An illustrated guide book to the New Jersey coast including tour information, attractions, activities, etc.

With 126 miles of coastline, the Jersey Shore has something for everyone--naturalists, golfers, families, gourmands, and more. Showcasing shoreline towns like Belmar, Spring Lake, and Ocean Grove, this guide offers the best places to dine, shop, sleep, and play.

More than just beaches and boardwalks, the 127-mile-long Jersey Shore coastline includes a rich, exciting diversity of landscape and activities. This thoroughly updated guide includes the latest information on where to go, stay, and eat for visitors of all ages and interests. Readers can experience:

The Jersey Shore, our most treasured asset, the envy of forty-nine other states, comes alive in this new book by the reporter and writer who knows New Jersey—and the Jersey Shore—best. Every conceivable topic—where to eat, where to stay, landmarks and attractions, what to do with the kids—is covered with the kind of inside information you just won’t find on tourism web sites or Facebook. All one hundred-plus Shore towns are included, from Sandy Hook to Cape May. There are hundreds of restaurant listings and recommendations. The book also contains engaging profiles and vignettes of the people and places that give the Shore its special character and charm. A throwback five-and-dime store on Long Beach Island. Banner pilots. Birders. Baby parades. And more. You want lists and rankings? The book is full of them—twenty best Shore towns, twenty-one secret spots down the Shore, twenty essential Jersey Shore experiences, fifty things we bet you didn’t know about the Shore, and so on. The book is the next best thing to being at the Shore; actually, it may be better than being there (think of those epic traffic jams on the Parkway, and all the money you’ll save on tolls, beach fees, and bad boardwalk pizza).

Days spent on wide expanses of fine sand. Nights riding roller coasters and carousels, games of mini golf and ski-ball, and meals of thin crust pizza and hand-dipped ice cream. The Atlantic coast beaches and boardwalks shout "Jersey Shore." But beyond the usual haunts lie fortune tellers and forgotten animals, rum runners and voodoo bunkers, pinball wizards and paranormal hubs. The Jersey Shore holds secrets you'll never see listed on a travel brochure. Discover all of these and more while you learn their stories in Secret Jersey Shore: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure. Journey to places you've never heard of and revisit those old haunts you thought you knew. Take a trip from the Nike Missiles in Sandy Hook to the underground railroad ties in Cape May. Visit solemn memorials to roadside oddities, from pirate hideouts to pet cemeteries, and from local heroes and beauty queens. Say the Pledge of Allegiance on the site where it was first recited, learn the true legend of Molly Pitcher, and allow a former Miss America to place that coveted tiara upon your head. Lifetime local Mary Dixon Lebeau invites you to visit the full expanse of the Jersey Shore and bring back more than just a good tan. You'll find treasure as you dig into the secrets buried in these pages.

In The Jersey Shore, Dominick Mazzagetti provides a modern re-telling of the history, culture, and landscapes of this famous region, from the 1600s to the present. The Shore, from Sandy Hook to Cape May, became a national resort in the late 1800s and contributes enormously to New Jersey’s economy today. The devastation of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 underscored the area’s central place in the state’s identity and the rebuilding efforts after the storm restored its economic health. Divided into chronological and thematic sections, this book will attract general readers interested in the history of the Shore: how it appeared to early European explorers; how the earliest settlers came to the beaches for the whaling trade; the first attractions for tourists in the nineteenth century; and how the coming of railroads, and ultimately automobiles, transformed the Shore into a major vacation destination over a century later. Mazzagetti also explores how the impact of changing national mores on development, race relations, and the environment, impacted the Shore in recent decades and will into the future. Ultimately, this book is an enthusiastic and comprehensive portrait by a native son, whose passion for the region is shared by millions of beachgoers throughout the Northeast.