Discover the Rich History of Long Beach Island

The Museum exhibits explore the lifestyles of the beautiful, sometimes dangerous and perhaps more personal shore of only a few generations ago.

 

Visitors can visualize the lost resort of Tucker's Island, a vanished home to some of the shore's first visitors.  The Museum explores the Tuckerton and Long Beach Railroad which transported vacationers, workers and families to the new resort of Beach Haven with its elegant boardwalk, just a fashionable stroll over the broad dunes from grand hotels such at the Engleside and Baldwin Hotels.

 

The displays visit early gunning and yacht clubs, a stay at Captain Bond's Long Beach House and the origins of a little fishing village once called Barnegat City, with its iconic lighthouse, a sentinel watching over the treacherous inlet.

 

The shore whalers are highlighted as some of the first settlers on this barrier island along with the pound fishermen that hauled in boats brimming with fish caught just off the beach.

 

There is also information about shipwrecks right off of Long Beach Island such as the Fortuna and the beginnings of the U.S. Life Saving Service, the precursor to the U.S. Coast Guard.

 

Visiting the Museum is an opportunity to discover our barrier island and appreciate the visionaries that shaped it.