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| Sandy Hook Lighthouse |
We usually drive as fast as we can through New Jersey to get
past the traffic and congestion.
But
what about the other Jersey?
So we have
headed to the Jersey Shore to see what we could find.
We started at the northernmost point of the New Jersey oceanfront
– Sandy Hook, at the mouth of New York Harbor.
In 1762 a committee of prominent New York merchants purchased land to
build a lighthouse to guide ships safely past the dangerous shoals off of Sandy
Hook. The lighthouse has been marking
the point continuously since 1764, making it the oldest U.S. lighthouse in continuous
use.
The land around the lighthouse was contested during the US
Revolution, and was fortified during the War of 1812.
During the 1890’s an army base, Fort Hancock,
and gun batteries were built to defend the harbor and protect NYC from attack
by sea.
The base was used until it was
decommissioned in 1974.
Some of the
buildings of the base are still in use today for
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| The Sandy Hook in the Background with Fort Hancock |
educational and scientific
research.
We climbed up to the top of the lighthouse and had a
fabulous view, including 4 of the 5 boroughs of New York City.
Sandy Hook and Fort Hancock are now part of the National
Park Service Gateway National Recreation Area, a collection of sites around New
York Harbor.
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| Sandy Hook Lighthouse |
On the way to Sandy Hook, we traveled for a short while
along the Jersey Shore.
In the town of Sea
Bright we passed a municipal parking lot by the sand dunes and beach.
We pulled over and crossed over the dunes to a
beautiful stretch of wide, white beach.
It
was a bright, warm day and we couldn’t be happier to see waves gently roll in
to shore.
Leaving Sandy Hook we traveled as close as we could to the
shore passing through beach towns, some affluent and some not so
well-to-do. We stopped off in the town
of Sea Girt to see their lighthouse. It
was not open, but we got a few good photos.
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| Looking up the stairwell |
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| Sea Bright Beach |
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| Sea Girt Light |
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