Beach reading
Wildwood’s beach once was west of where the Boardwalk is now; that and more on new USGS site.
If you've been to Wildwood recently you probably know that you can burn off a lot of frozen custard by walking from the Boardwalk to the water.
As we've noted, the growth of the beach is the aftermath of a 100-year-old engineering project.
From 1908 to 1911, the U.S. government spent $15 million to build mile-long stone jetties to stabilize an inlet between the Wildwoods and Cape May.
But since then, the Wildwood beach has been expanding, while Cape May's exists courtesy of the largesse of U.S. taxpayers who have paid for sand replenishment.
The history of the Wildwood beach is, indeed, a wild one, and you can get some idea of the volatility of sand by checking out the U.S. Geological Survey's new beach erosion tool.
Let's say you want to look at the history of the Wildwood beach. After clicking on the site, go to the "search" area in the upper-right side and type in Wildwood, NJ.
Go to "zoom to," and then to "all," which is next to the search window. Choose "shoreline change." Click on "explore options" and pick "historical shoreline positions."
That will show you the shorelines for selected years. Clicking on one of the colored lines will reveal the year.
You can do this for any beach in the country. Just keep in mind that the only years available are a given location are those for which reliable data was available, said USGS's Rob Thieler.
Thieler says the project was 15 years in the making, and do feel free to pass along any comments to USGS.