2 weeks Ago
Just how many Jersey Shore beaches inspire a shout out from NASA? Wildwood holds such an honor. The federal agency — and it kind of has the best views up there — recently highlighted the growth of that beach since 1986 and said to walk from the surf to the boardwalk you have to traverse the length of four to six football fields. That’s still true today.
The beach is massive enough for the city to have beach taxis on the sand to help you lug your stuff. The mayor, 73-year-old Ernie Troiano Jr., says he believes the beach is possibly twice as big or bigger in some areas compared to when he was a teenager roughly 60 years ago.
If you’ve visited you know that taking your cooler and towel from the arcade games to a comfy sandy spot is no joke. “It’s grown since I’ve been here. I started here in 1990,” Jack McGinniss, a 52-year-old driver and dispatcher with Wildwood Beach Taxi, told NJ Advance Media on Monday amid the dog days of summer.
The former lifeguard said the nearby North Wildwood may have had beach taxis at some point too — perhaps in the ‘80s when it may very well have had the state’s largest beach — but coastal erosion has made those services moot. “We didn’t start the service (in Wildwood) until 2012,” McGinniss said. “Prior to that lifeguards would do transports for very hard case situations, people that were truly disabled, who couldn’t make it down.
” For people in Wildwood, the length of the beach — like the sand itself — is a well-tread story. After all, the city’s beach is home to New Jersey’s largest country music festival each summer drawing some 30,000 people (what may become “the largest in the country,” the mayor remarked.) Recently, when former President Donald Trump came to the town , organizers said they were ready for as many as 40,000.
Everything from a straightaway beach race to a sand-sculpting competition has plenty of room on the sizable shore. “We’ve been measuring the Wildwood City beach at Cresse Avenue since 1986. It has steadily grown to its current width of 1,600 feet (or 533 yards) from the boardwalk to the shoreline, zero elevation datum position,” Steven Hafner, a research scientist and assistant director of Stockton University’s Coastal Research Center, told NJ Advance Media.
In 2000, that same spot at Cresse Avenue in Wildwood was fewer than 400 feet, according to data from Stockton University. Stockton University has measured the beach at Cresse Avenue since 1986. "It has steadily grown to its current width of 1,600 feet (or 533 yards) from the boardwalk to the shoreline, zero elevation datum position,” Steven Hafner, a research scientist and assistant director Stockton University’s Coastal Research Center, told NJ Advance Media.
In the year 2000, that same spot at Cresse Avenue in Wildwood was fewer than 400 feet from the boardwalk to the shoreline, according to the data. Chart by Stockton University Hafner and other Stockton experts said there are a variety of reasons for the size of Wildwood’s beach. But first, some caveats are important to note.
“Wildwood City beaches do not have developed dunes so if you are only looking at the recreational beach then yes they are the widest,” Hafner said. “However, if you include the dune system width as part of the entire system then there are other locations that rival the city of Wildwood.” Those include the area at the mid-section of Avalon from 44th Street to 50th Street, he said.
There the entire system is more than 1,600 feet. Similarly, the south end of Brigantine’s dune and beach is close to 1,900 feet. The north end of Long Beach Island and Island Beach State Park rank up there too.
However, not counting the dunes, Wildwood still reigns supreme ( not that everyone’s a fan). Why so wide Experts described the reasons for the size differences along New Jersey’s 130 miles of shoreline — such as erosion eating away at certain beaches or barrier islands. In short, those are natural geologic processes.
Storms, which can be fueled by climate change, also work to intensify wave action and the power of winds on the shore to move sand or take it away. It’s why the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection work annually to shore up and replenish certain beaches and expand the use of living shorelines. Separately, residential and commercial development on the Jersey Shore, as well as sea level rise, have impacts of their own on where sand does and doesn’t accumulate. Aerial view of Adventure Pier (left) and Surfside Pier part of the Morey’s Piers & Beachfront Waterparks complex on the Wildwood oceanfront, Sunday, April 14, 2024.
Andrew Mills | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com For Wildwood, things get complicated in a different way. Some of the causes are manmade.
A jetty at the southern end of the island that juts out into the ocean to protect the Cape May inlet, and the causeway connecting the two islands — both constructed more than a century ago — limit the tidal flow and keep the sand from moving further south. Other causes are out of our control. Currents parallel to the shore “move sand north to south along the Wildwoods so as North Wildwood erodes the city of Wildwood receives that sand and grows wider,” Hafner, the Stockton researcher, added.
“In our report there are long term trends at 15th Avenue in North Wildwood and at Cresse Ave in Wildwood City. The results are nearly opposite in pattern,” Hafner said. Wildwood Mayor Troiano has been blunt in the past about a beach that’s too big bringing problems of its own over the years — namely the sand influx clogging up outfall pipes .
But all in all, he has a positive outlook on the impressive breadth of his hometown shore. “We’re blessed to have a beach the size we have,” Troiano said. Early 1900s aerial view of the Wildwood boardwalk.
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