Five Mile Beach

Five Mile Beach or Holly Beach is the name of a barrier island on the Jersey Shore in Cape May County. The popular resort area collectively known as The Wildwoods are on Five Mile Beach and adjacent islands.

Geography

Five Mile Beach is a barrier island along the Atlantic Ocean between Hereford Inlet on the northeast, and the former Turtle Gut Inlet on the southwest. Grassy Sound, Richardson Sound, Taylor Sound and Sunset Lake, as well as an expanse of salt marsh and tidal channels separates Five Mile Beach from the mainland. The closing of Turtle Gut Inlet in 1922 has made Five Mile Beach continuous with Two Mile Beach.

Five Mile Beach was described in 1834 as,

Five Mile Beach, between Hereford and Turtle Gut inlets, partly in Middle and partly in Lower t-ship, Cape May co., of a wedge-like form, having in its greatest width about a mile.[1]

An 1878 description of Five Mile Beach is as follows, viz,

Five Mile Beach is now between four and five miles long, and was formerly well timbered. This has been largely taken off in recent years. A lighthouse has been placed on the northeastern end of the island, near Hereford Inlet.[2]

Communities

Communities on the island include Wildwood, North Wildwood and Wildwood Crest. Diamond Beach, a part of Lower Township, is on Two Mile Beach and land reclaimed as a result of the closure of Turtle Gut Inlet; West Wildwood is on an adjacent island.

References
  1. Gordon, Thomas Francis (1834). A Gazetteer of the State of New Jersey - Thomas F. Gordon - Google Books. Retrieved October 14, 2018.
  2. Historical and Biographical Atlas of the New Jersey Coast, Woolman and Rose, Philadelphia, 1878; p. 21


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