Creative History

  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 t...

  In the late 17th century,  when New York City was still known to many as Neue Amsterdam, having only recently fallen under British control in 1664; when the Hudson River was still called the North River and the Delaware River was still referred to as the South River, there was a settlement known as Communipaw, on the New Jersey side of the harbor then referred to as the colony of Bergen. Even today, in what is modern day Jersey City, there’s still a neighborhood along the waterfront near Liberty Island sitting in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty that is known as Communipaw.   It is considered to be Jersey City’s oldest neighborhood. In 1896 American author and folklorist Charles M. Skinner, a native New Yorker himself, published a work entitled Myths and Legends of Our Own Land .  In this work he recounted a story called “The Party from Gibbet Island”.  This story centered around the colonial community of Communipaw in present day New Jersey. ...

  In 1850 local resident Dr. Jonathan Pitney began to promote the idea of Absecon Island, located just off southern New Jersey’s coast, as an ideal seaside medical retreat for many of his patients who suffered from various ailments, everything ranging from tuberculosis to nervous breakdowns. Pitney extolled the healing properties of ocean air and saltwater to all who would listen, and by 1853 Pitney along with civil engineer Richard Osborne, who would be in charge of the building’s design and construction, were able to successfully pitch the idea of building a major seaside resort on Absecon Island in New Jersey to influential financiers and politicians. Within a year of the resort’s construction Philadelphia politicians and railroad investors were persuaded enough by Pitney, Osborne and other New Jersey lobbyists to finance a railway that linked the City of Brotherly Love directly with the Jersey Shore and traversed the whole of the Garden State. On July 4, 1854 by charter o...

  It is the summer of 1991 and adventurous, pioneering and some would even say fool-hardy wreck diver and ship’s Captain Bill Nagle has been hearing rumors of a mysterious, unidentified World War Two era wreck located somewhere off the coast of the Jersey Shore.   Fisherman, ship’s captains, even casual weekend sailors in and around Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey, have reported sighting what they say is a Nazi wreck not all that far from shore.   Local New Jersey mariners have taken to calling the mysterious wreck, which many have said is that of a possible submarine, a German U-boat-- the U-Who? . Despite the best efforts of researchers both in and outside of academia, no one has been able to locate either a German or an American record of a U-boat having been sunk, intentionally or accidentally so close to Point Pleasant Beach at any time during the Second World War. Bill Nagle, along with his diving partner, experienced wreck diver John Chatterton, set of...