1916: The Year that the Modern American Summer Vacation was Born on the Beaches of Coney Island and along the Jersey Shore

 During the unbearably hot summer of 1916--while the horrors of the First World War raged across the Atlantic in Europe--Americans, who as yet were still considered neutrals in the Great War to End All Wars, flocked to the beaches along the eastern seaboard in record numbers.

Nowhere was this early twentieth century summer holiday craze more apparent than along the Jersey Shore and at the beaches that were in close proximity to New York City--most notably Coney Island.  By July of 1916 Brooklyn’s Coney Island had already begun to come into its own known worldwide as America’s most popular summertime playground for both children and adults.  Coney Island’s nearest competitor for the title of America’s Beach in 1916 was about one hundred miles south, with a boardwalk all its own and just as famous in its own right, New Jersey’s Atlantic City.

During the monumental summer of 1916 in France soldiers from all over Europe were slaughtering one another by the thousands in the trenches of the Western Front, and even in America too that summer, not everything was all fun in the sun or a day at the beach, no pun intended.  

By July of 1916 New York City and the urban portions of northeastern New Jersey were fighting the most deadly polio epidemic in our nation’s history to that point.  On June 1, 1916 the Mayor of New York officially declared a city wide polio epidemic, and ground zero for the crippling and deadly outbreak was the borough of Brooklyn--home to America’s summertime playground Coney Island--and to an influx of thousands upon thousands of summer beachgoers.

Postcard of Coney Island 1916

A special task force led by Dr. Simon R. Blatteis--head of the New York City Health Department--was formed that June immediately after Mayor John P. Mitchel declared the polio outbreak an epidemic.  The task force, under Dr. Blatteis would quickly set up two clinics in Brooklyn, the epicenter of the disease at the time, to try and contain the outbreak.  He spearheaded efforts to forcibly quarantine those that had been exposed to the disease in their own homes and he urged parents to keep their children at home and in doors during the height of the mid-summer heat. All efforts to contain the spread of polio proved futile. By the end of summer 1916 nearly 2500 New Yorkers, mostly children, would die from polio.  Tens of thousands of others would be permanently crippled as a result of the disease by the end of 1916.

At the time the nature of polio as a viral infection, and how it was spread and transmitted, was gravely misunderstood by nearly every member of the medical profession.  Therefore, rather surprisingly, out of a mistaken belief that fresh seabreezes and saltwater air could help prevent the spread of infectious disease, one the few areas for public recreation that Dr. Blatteis and his task force kept open and actively encouraged all members of the general public to use were New York City’s several public beaches.

And to escape the dreaded childhood disease of polio tens of thousands of New York City’s well-to-do, particularly those wealthy enough to live in Manhattan, fled the city altogether for seaside vacation resorts up and down the east coast of the United States.  The city’s poorer residents, predominantly those who lived in the city’s outer boroughs like Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, went to public beaches like Coney Island in Brooklyn, and Rockaway Beach in Queens in droves to also escape the dreaded polio and beat the oppressive heat.

On July 4, 1916 The New York Times ran a series of very ominous sounding headlines:  “Bar All Children from the Movies in Paralysis War”.... “72 New Cases Reported”.... “23 Dead Yesterday”.

Why the New York Times chose to specifically attack movie theaters, and not teeming, sweltering packed slums and tenements as places that caused the spread of infectious disease among children during the City’s ongoing “Paralysis War” in the summer of 1916 is anyone’s guess.  The poor had no choice but to stay in the City and sweat and watch their children suffer and die--and yet--they went to the beach!  In record numbers by the tens of thousands it seemed like everybody in New York City in the summer of 1916 was looking for their little place in the sand.

It was proof that as the 20th century, America’s Century, really started to get under way in 1916, that nothing--not polio; not a heatwave, a government warning or even a World War in Europe--nothing--could keep Americans from having a great time in the surf and sand of summer!

And just across the Hudson River and a few miles down the coast on the New Jersey side, where the polio epidemic wasn’t quite as severe, thousands were flocking to the beaches of the Jersey Shore to beat the oppressive heat wave of 1916.   At the time, the Garden State Parkway which runs the length of New Jersey, and the American Interstate highway system in general, was still decades in the future, so beachgoers came from Newark, Jersey City, Philadelphia and all points north, south, east and west by train.

Though the automobile was gaining rapidly in popularity, outside of major cities in 1916, paved roads in general were still very much of a rarity and America at that time was still a nation that rode, for the most part, on iron rails.

No beach in New Jersey was more popular than Atlantic City, but a place called Long Beach Island along New Jersey’s barrier islands was definitely a close second, and gaining in popularity among the wealthy elite of Philadelphia and Camden.  The founders of Long Beach Island called their beach resort town, “A little piece of Florida along the Jersey coast.”

Though the polio epidemic may not have been quite as severe in New Jersey as it was in the more densely populated areas of New York City, beachgoers along the Jersey Shore during the summer of 1916 had their own, perhaps even more fearful, threat to deal with--Man eating sharks!

To this very day the 1916 Jersey Shore Shark Attacks have continued to give all sharks a bad rap with the general public in America.  Because of the notoriety generated by the freak nature of the 1916 Jersey Shore Shark Attacks many people believe that ALL sharks are bloodthirsty predatory man-eating monsters.  The 1916 Jersey Shore Shark Attacks were used in the 1970’s as the direct inspiration for Peter Benchley’s best-selling novel and subsequent blockbuster film Jaws.  The 1916 Shark Attacks have made over a century’s worth of beachgoers wary of going too far out into the water.As it was, the Jersey Shore Shark Attacks of 1916 lasted for about two weeks at the beginning of July of that year.  The attacks led to some of the most nightmarish, blood-curdling and sensationalist newspaper reporting and headlines in American history.  In total four people were killed by the attacks and one person was critically injured.  Shark attacks in July of 1916 occurred off the coast of Long Beach Island, Manasquan, Point Pleasant and even along the banks of the Raritan River!

To read more about the Jersey Shore Shark Attacks of 1916 check out an earlier Creative History article I wrote in July of 2020 here: 

https://creativehistorystories.blogspot.com/2020/07/jersey-shore-maneater-shark-panic-polio.htm

Panic swept the east coast of the United States, but then, just as inexplicably as they had begun, the Jersey Shore Shark Attacks of 1916 suddenly stopped.

Even today the true cause of the attacks, and what exactly caused sharks to act in such an erratic manner along the Jersey Shore at the beginning of July 1916 is still unknown and still hotly debated by scientists.  The reputation of sharks has suffered ever since.

By the end of July panic over the Jersey Shore Shark Attacks had ceased but the heat had definitely come to stay!

New York City had more than half a dozen days that summer when high temperatures in excess of one-hundred degrees Fahrenheit were recorded in Central Park.  In Chicago on July 30th the highest temperature ever recorded in the history of the Windy City was reached at 104 degrees and a heatwave that melted asphalt settled in across the midwest as July turned to August 1916.

But even despite polio epidemics, man-eating sharks and deadly heatwaves the summer of 1916 was the year that a great American patriotic tradition was born, and when a great American summer food first became all the rage at the beach--the hot dog.

Often called red hots back then, but rarely called frankfurters anymore in the summer of 1916 because of increasing anti-German sentiment in America due to Germany’s policy of unrestricted submarine warfare against supposedly neutral merchant shipping, it was Nathan’s Famous on Coney Island that led the charge that made hot dogs a uniquely American culinary delight.

Legend has it that on Independence Day in 1916 four recently arrived immigrants to the United States who were celebrating our nation’s birthday on the beach at Coney Island engaged in a hot dog eating contest outside Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand on the boardwalk to prove who was more patriotic.

An Irish immigrant by the name of James Mullen was said to have won the first hot dog eating contest way back in 1916 though some claim that an Italian immigrant with the name Durante was, in fact, our great nation’s first hot dog eating champion.  

Is any of the legend behind the creation of the Nathan’s Famous hot dog eating contest true?  Who knows?  What is true is that the contest has been held every fourth of July at Coney Island ever since and it is most definitely a uniquely American competition.

Within a year of the momentous summer of 1916 America would enter the First World War and upwards of 100,000 young Americans would die in the trenches of the Western Front before an armistice ending the war was declared on November 11, 1918.

Soon a pandemic that would make the polio epidemic of 1916 seem tame by comparison-- the Great Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918 would kill millions of young Americans and not be rivaled in mortality by any disease for nearly a century.

America, appalled by the horrors of World War One would isolate itself and shrink from the world stage.  It would take another, far more deadly World War a generation later before the United States finally took its rightful place as leader of the free world.  Prohibition, organized crime and finally the Great Depression would plague the United States throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s.  

But despite all of this, on the sandy beaches of places like Coney Island and the Jersey Shore, amidst the boardwalk of Atlantic City and seaside amusement parks up and down the east coast, the yearly beach going celebration that we know today as the modern American summer vacation was born way back during the momentous summer of 1916.