It is impossible to estimate in dollars and cents what the loss will be. It is beyond question the most severe storm that has visited that portion of the Atlantic coast within the memory of the present generation. The storm is raging with great violence along the entire New-Jersey coast from Sandy Hook Point to Cape May City, and up the Delaware River as far north as Trenton. 390 pp., including illustrations and maps. Historical and Biographical Atlas of the New Jersey Coast (Philadelphia: Woolman & Rose, 1878).
The headline of a nineteenth-century New York Tribune article proclaimed "A Coast Line Changed":Ĭover. Large storms have ravaged the Jersey coast time and again. Their locations are plotted on the coastal maps. By the 1870s, a string of lighthouses had been erected and/or refitted "so that in sailing the light of one is not lost till the next is in sight." Also, a system of forty-one lifesaving stations had been organized, accelerated by funding from Congress in 1871. In addition, there is an alphabetical list of more than two hundred known shipwrecks, followed by a north-south listing of another 125 vessels wrecked between Manasquan and Barnegat Inlets. The first hundred pages document the history of the New Jersey coast, by county and township, and provide biographical sketches of the "most prominent citizens along the coast, who, by their talents, industry, or means, had materially aided to advance growth and prosperity". The volume's numerous elaborate engravings of public and private properties and the detailed hand-colored plans of towns and villages-all demonstrate the publisher's desire "to preserve and perpetuate in some substantial form a record of the past and present condition of that portion of New Jersey.
From the north point of Sandy Hook to the south point of Cape May, the coastline stretches for about 130 miles, embracing parts of Monmouth, Ocean, Burlington, Atlantic, and Cape May Counties. Displayed in these pages is the golden age of the Jersey shore, certainly the state's most volatile landscape to be mapped over the past 350 years. 390 pp., including illustrations and maps.įirst atlas of the New Jersey coastal regions.