Wildwood Beaches

A Long Way To Fun
Plenty of room in Wildwood, but is a trek to the water
By MICHAEL MILLER Staff Writer, (609) 463-6712
Press of Atlantic City
Published: Sunday, July 30, 2006
Updated: Sunday, July 30, 2006

WILDWOOD – Hosi Khan of Montreal stood, hands on hips, looking for the rest of his beach party.

Khan lugged about 40 pounds of cooler, towels, beach chairs, umbrella and snacks piled high on a hand cart from the parking lot past the Wildwoods Convention Center.

But he stopped after 100 feet when he realized he wasn't sure where he was going. The rest of his family was nowhere in sight. With acres of deep sand surrounding him, he was looking for a beeline.

Finally, he spotted them waving about 100 yards north. With a grunt he leaned forward and continued the slog.

“My sister-in-law picked the place,” he said, panting a little as the cart's almost useless wheels dug parallel furrows in the hot sand. “She had to pick the farthest spot.”

With him pulling and his brother-in-law Tuan Vu pushing, they made it to the family's umbrella planted like an explorer's flag in their patch of white beach.

Families such as Khan's make this pilgrimage to the sea every summer day — sometimes many times throughout the day. The walk never gets any shorter.

Wildwood has the Mount Everest of beaches. It's so vast the city has dirtbike rallies here. It's so immense, it serves as a drop zone for skydivers every summer and boasts two outdoor movie theaters with room enough for thousands of beach towels, sandcastles and umbrellas.

The only erosion here is the kind that nibbles at your will to keep moving toward the mirage that is the water.

“We call it the desert,” said Drew Landes of Boyertown, Pa., still dripping from a refreshing ocean swim.

“We like that it's a long stretch of sand. It never gets too crowded,” he said.

Tour operators have taken full advantage. One company gives rides on the beach in a cherry-red monster truck named The Jersey Devil. Another enterprising businessman approached commissioners in 2000 about giving camel rides on the city's own Sahara.

Perhaps, as Landes suggests, some people are intimidated by the prospect of crossing to the water's edge without help from a Sherpa. More likely, the ample beach creates an optical illusion that there are fewer people here than in neighboring towns. After all, there are no beach tags here.

Celine Pilon of La Chute, Quebec, used a beach ball the size of a coffee table to play kickball with three children. They only needed a courtyard's worth of room but had enough empty acreage around them to fill Citizens Bank Park.

“We went to Cape May first. Here, it's better for the children,” Pilon said. “They have more room.”

Why so big?

Wildwood hasn't always had such a generous strand. Aerial photographs from 1920 show a consistent strip of sandy coastline resembling beaches in Ocean City today.

What happened? Two major things, beach expert Stewart Farrell said.

He is director of the Coastal Research Center at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built twin jetties along either side of Cold Spring Inlet, the rocks began trapping sand that might otherwise have drifted south to Cape May and the Delaware Bay, he said.

Then in 1922, an entire channel called Turtle Gut Inlet became choked with sand forming what is now Sunset Lake in Wildwood Crest. The sand from the inlet began to collect, helping to form what is now a Wildwoods phenomenon.

Another reason Wildwood has such amazing beaches is the sand itself. Five Mile Island has the finest sand in New Jersey, Jeffrey Gebert said.

He runs the coastal planning section of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Philadelphia.

“The smallest grain size of sand along 125 miles of New Jersey coast is in the zone occupied by the Wildwoods,” he said.

The difference is tangible. Wildwood's beaches actually feel different beneath bare feet than Strathmere's or Atlantic City's. The fine sand in the surf can be packed so tight it feels smooth and hard like marble. The dry stuff can be silty.

“There is a progressive fining as you go south along the coast,” Gebert said. “The grain size gets smaller and smaller until you get to Wildwood.”

Contrarily, Delaware Bay beaches have larger grains and even bits of polished quartz known locally as Cape May diamonds.

The grain of the sand has a correlation with the slope of the beach, Gebert said. Wildwood has some of the flattest beaches, too, in New Jersey.

“The larger the grain size, the steeper the slope,” he said.

So even though beachgoers have a long walk, at least it's flat.

Shifting sands

Farrell said Wildwood's colossal beach likely won't get much bigger.

“The rate of growth has come to a standstill on Wildwood's beaches. They won't get even 100 feet wider naturally,” he said.

This is good news in some ways. The city has to work daily to keep storm-water pipes free of sand. The bigger the beach, the more time it takes for tractors to rake trash and debris every morning.

The creeping beach has dry docked the fishing pier on Heather Road in Wildwood Crest. At low tide, anglers with the local fishing club can cast 200 feet and still miss the water.

The Army Corps launched a study of the island's beaches this year. North Wildwood's northern beaches have lost as much as 800 feet of sand in the past decade.

Gebert said tourism dollars are a factor in his agency's analyses for shore protection projects. There is no telling whether the island's large beaches attract tourists for the elbow room or keep them away because of the daunting hike, he said.

“As a beachgoer, the quarter mile of hot, dry beach to get to the Boardwalk or where you park your car. To me, that would not be an advantage,” he said. “Does it have an impact on the number of beach users?”

Not judging by Saturday's crowds. The beaches were dotted with umbrellas as far as the eye could see.

People seemed to enjoy the space, flying kites and building enormous castles. Wildwood hosted an Ultimate Frisbee tournament Saturday. The Poplar Avenue beach fit 60 fields with space for team tents.

Lifeguards in some towns rigidly enforce rules against tossing footballs or Frisbees on crowded beaches. Not here, Caroline Pauze of Montreal said.

”We used to go to Ocean City. But the lifeguards made you swim between the flags,” she said, toting a beach chair and a backpack full of drinks and summer reading.

“But I'm not here to play games today. I just want to relax.”

And here, more than at any beach in New Jersey, there is plenty of room for that.

To e-mail Michael Miller at The Press:MMiller@pressofac.com