Atlantic City has a long and varied history. Though much has been written about the post 1977 casino years, and the heyday years of the 30's and 40's when the Atlantic City Boardwalk was the in place to be seen, there is a wealth of rich history which dates back over two hundred years before the first dice were thrown or the first jitney hit the pavement.
The first recorded owner of Absecon Island was Thomas Budd, an Englishman, who arrived in Atlantic County in late 1670's. Budd was given the island and other acreage as settlement of a claim he had against the holders of the royal grant. His mainland property was then valued at $0.40 an acre, while the beach land a mere $0.04 an acre. That same piece of beach front property today would be worth millions of dollars per acre.
For the next hundred years, the island would be visited by not only the Indians, but also hunters and some of the early mainland settlers. Among these brave soles, was Jeremiah Leeds. Leeds, born in Leeds Point in 1754, was the first white man to build a permanent structure on the island in 1785 at what is now Arctic and Arkansas Avenue.
By the year 1850, there were seven permanent dwellings on the island, all but one which were owned by descendants of Jeremiah Leeds. Dr. Jonathan Pitney, a prominent physician who lived in Absecon, felt that the island had much to offer, and even had ideas of making the island a health resort but access to the island had to be improved. Pitney, along with a civil engineer from Philadelphia, Richard Osborne, had the idea to bring the railroad to the island. In 1852, construction began on the Camden-Atlantic City Railroad. On July 5, 1854, the first train arrived from Camden after a grueling 21/2 hour trip, and the invasion of the tourists had begun.
Osborne has been given credit with naming the city, while his friend Dr. Pitney thought up the plan for the names and placements of the city streets which remains today. Streets running parallel to the ocean would be named after the worlds great bodies of water, Pacific, Atlantic, Baltic, Mediterranean, Adriatic, and Arctic, while the streets which ran east to west would be named after the States.
There were beautiful hotels, elegant restaurants, and convenient transportation, but the businessmen of Atlantic City had one big problem to contend with...SAND. It was everywhere, from the train cars to the hotel lobbies. In 1870, Alexander Boardman, a conductor on the Atlantic City-Camden Railroad, was asked to think up a way to keep the sand out of the hotels and rail cars. Boardman, along with a hotel owner Jacob Keim, presented an idea to City Council. In 1870, and costing half the towns tax revenue that year, an eight foot wide wooden foot walk was built from the beach into town. This first Boardwalk, which was taken up during the winter, was replaced with another larger structure in 1880. On Sunday September 9, 1889, a devastating hurricane hit the island, destroying the boardwalk. Most of the city was under 6 feet of water, and the ocean met the bay at Georgia Ave. The Boardwalk of today is 60 feet wide, and 6 miles long. Its planks, placed in a herringbone pattern, are laid on a substructure of concrete and steel. Steel railings are in place to keep visitors from falling off to the beach below, and in accordance with an old City Council ordinance, hotels, restaurants and shops are kept on one side of the boards, with amusement piers on the other.
On Wednesday, June 16, 1880, Atlantic City was formally opened. With fanfare the likes few in the area had seen, a resort was born. By the census of 1900, there were over 27,000 residents in Atlantic City, up from a mere 250 just 45 years before.
Atlantic City became "the’ place to go. Entertainers from vaudeville to Hollywood graced the stages of the piers. Glamorous Hotels like Haddon Hall, The Traymore, The Shelburne and The Marlborough-Blenheim drew guests from all over the world. Atlantic City's future seemed bright, until World War II. After the war, the public seemed to stop its love affair with The World's Favorite Playground. Possibly because of the publics access to national air travel, the shift of the population westward, the general deterioration of the city, or a shift in the public’s taste for more sophisticated entertainment, Atlantic City lost much of its shine; and most of its tourists.
With the passage of the Casino Gambling Referendum in 1976, Atlantic City began an upward battle, not unlike one it had started two hundred years before, to use the glorious resources it has been given by nature, to make it once again a world renown tourist Mecca.
