One is greatly impressed with the vast numbers of resorts on the
Atlantic coast. All along the Jersey shore from Bar Harbor to
Cape May you will find it almost as thickly settled as a town.
Here along this coast an amazing degree of congestion exists.
You will marvel to see all along the beach from Sandy Hook,
fifty miles of crowded street, of hotels, and houses, and behind
these still others. How this vast seaside population thrills
one, bringing visions of the "vastness and wealth of teeming
millions" of this great nation of ours. One author says, and
with truth, that Atlantic City could accommodate all of France
and still have room for more while Asbury Park would furnish
ample room as a seaside resort for Belgium and Holland.
Atlantic City, known throughout the world as a great all-the-
year resort, is situated upon Absecon Island off the Jersey
coast. Absecon is an Indian name given to this island, meaning
"Place of Swans." Great flocks of these graceful birds are said
to have frequented this spot, where they fed on clams and
oysters. The swans have long since gone, their place being taken
by less graceful and more richly attired birds, that at stated
times flock there in vast numbers. Its close proximity to the
large eastern centers of population give it an unrivaled
location. The climate is made equable by the Gulf Stream. It is
much warmer here in winter than at New York or Philadelphia and
weather records show sixty-two per cent sunshine. Motorists
visit the seashore metropolis by tens of thousands in all
seasons of the year.
Atlantic City has one thousand two hundred hotels and boarding
houses to meet every purse and entertains twenty million people
annually, the transient population reaching four hundred
thousand in August and never being less than fifty thousand.
For six miles along one of the finest bathing beaches on the
Atlantic seaboard extends the world-famed board walk, sixty feet
wide, topped with planking and built upon a steel and concrete
foundation, where promenade health and recreation seekers from
all parts of America and foreign climes. There are four great
piers varying in length from one thousand to three thousand
feet, with auditoriums and all kinds of amusements which are as
varied as the visitors are versatile. The shops of the board
walk are one of its most attractive features.
One's motto at Atlantic City as well as the world over should be
that of a certain medicine man who gave this advice to his
customers: "Let your eyes be your judge, your pocketbook your
guide, and your money the last thing you part with." But, alas!
how few heeded the free advice he gave them, but persisted in
buying his patent nostrums until their pocketbooks could
scarcely raise an audible jingle!
