Nelson Johnson - Boardwalk Empire - The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City

When Pitney arrived the only people living on the island were all descendants of a Revolutionary War veteran, Jeremiah Leeds. Several years after the war, Leeds built a cedar log cabin on Further Island and settled there with his wife, Judith. (The Leeds’ homestead was the site of what was later to become Columbus Park and after that the “Corridor” at the foot of the Atlantic City Expressway.) Leeds and those who followed him called their home “Absecon Island.”

Jeremiah Leeds was a bear of a man, standing six-foot-tall and weighing 250 pounds. With the help of his 10 children, he cleared the fields around his home and raised crops of corn and rye. The crops he grew and sold, plus his catches from fishing and hunting, allowed the Leeds family to want for little. Leeds enjoyed the solitude of the island. The thrifty farmer bought land every chance he could but never sold any. At the time of his death, Jeremiah Leeds owned nearly 1,200 acres on Absecon Island, having title to everything except a single tract of 131 acres.

Pitney was charmed by the serenity and unspoiled beauty of Absecon Island. He returned often and grew convinced that this was where he would make his mark. Pitney believed that Absecon Island had potential as a vacation retreat for the wealthy. As a doctor, Pitney felt the island could be promoted as a health resort. He wasn’t going to get rich from his medical practice, nor would he ever have any real clout in politics, but as the founder of a resort he might gain both money and power.

Pitney’s dream was to build a “city by the sea.” He tried selling his idea by touting the healing powers of salt water and sea air, recommending a stay at the beach for every ailment. The problem was getting people to South Jersey and then to the island.

Rail transportation was the answer. During the second half of the 19th century, railroads opened vast tracts of land, otherwise inaccessible, to development. In Pitney’s time the railroad locomotive became a symbol for progress and opportunity. Pitney knew it was his best and only hope to exploit Absecon Island.

Pitney began his campaign by writing letters to any newspaper that would print them, concentrating on the Philadelphia dailies. He recognized the potential for a link between Philadelphia and Absecon Island. If his plans were to become a reality he needed to position his health resort within the orbit of a major population center. Philadelphia was his only choice. In his letters, from “Doctor Pitney,” he expounded upon the health benefits of Absecon Island. In all his letters he stressed that the only thing necessary to make this health-giving island available to everyone was a railroad from Philadelphia to the seashore. Pitney’s letter campaign continued for years without success. The only people excited about his idea were the descendants of Jeremiah Leeds. Some of them had no desire to farm and hoped to sell their land.

But even the Leeds family had trouble believing Pitney could ever make anything of Absecon Island. The island that existed in 1850, as Pitney wrote in his letters, consisted “almost exclusively of fine white sand, piled in hills like snowdrifts.” There were “several ridges found on these old beaches separated by long, narrow valleys in which were found coarse grasses, rushes, low bushes, and vines in addition to oak, cedar, and holly timber.” The summit of one of these sand dunes was more than 50 feet high. The island was covered with a growth of trees: “wild fruits, beach plums, fox grapes, and huckleberries were found abundantly in some places.”

Less appealing than the holly trees and wild fruits were the insects. Between the months of June and September, the mosquitoes and greenhead flies ruled the island. During the summer, whenever the ocean breeze subsided, the greenhead flies were everywhere. They were so large they cast a shadow as they swarmed about their victims. These flies were nasty creatures and the pain of their bites lingered for days. Cider vinegar was the only lotion that helped ease the sting. Absecon Island may have been a pristine wilderness, but it wasn’t a vacationer’s paradise or a place one would think of as a health resort. No one reading Pitney’s letters who was familiar with South Jersey’s barrier islands could have taken him seriously.

With no success from his letter campaign, Pitney decided to pursue a railroad charter by presenting his idea to the state legislature. The right to construct a rail line would give him credibility with investors. In 1851 he made several trips to Trenton to meet with political leaders and lobby for his railroad. The trips by horseback were long and lonely, and the reception wasn’t friendly.

The legislators labeled his idea “Pitney’s folly.” They rejected it with almost no debate and ridiculed it as the “Railroad to Nowhere.” The consensus of the legislature was that it wasn’t possible for a new seacoast resort to compete with Cape May, which was America’s first seashore resort. Wealthy businessmen from Philadelphia and Baltimore, as well as plantation owners and tobacco brokers from Maryland and Virginia, had been vacationing in Cape May since the 1790s and there was no reason to believe that would change.

Cape May had evolved from a sportsman’s fishing village where the upper class went to “rough it.” Staying overnight in cedar log beach houses and tents, these early vacationers spent their days fishing and hunting waterfowl. With the help of slaves, visitors prepared their own meals and passed the evenings gathered around campfires. Over the next several decades, businessmen from Philadelphia and Delaware constructed hotels and boardinghouses, extending the pleasures of a summer vacation at Cape May’s beach to the less hardy.

One visitor to Cape May in the summer of 1850 wrote to her readers at home describing the “parti-colored scene” created by the new sport of “seabathing.” She reported that thousands of people, “men, women and children, in red, blue, and yellow pantaloons and yellow straw hats adorned with bright red ribbon, go out into the sea in crowds, and leap up and down in the heaving waves amid great laughter and merriment.” The reporter, Swedish novelist and travel writer Frederika Bremer (1801–1865), reporting on the scene at Cape May’s beach continued, “White and black people, horses and carriages, and dogs—all are there, one among another, and just before them great fishes, porpoises, lift up their heads, and sometime take a huge leap, very likely because they are so amused at seeing human beings leaping about in their own element.”

In pre-Civil War days, Cape May was renowned as a “Southern resort” and was a mecca for the cream of Southern society. Southern planters and the elite of the North brought their gleaming horse-drawn carriages and paraded in the sun along the water’s edge. Nationally celebrated bands performed for the ladies in the fine hotels, while the men passed their time gambling. The most popular gambling house was The Blue Pig —for “gentlemen” only.

By 1850, no resort in America could compare to the Jersey Cape in terms of attracting the rich and famous. More national figures made Cape May their summer retreat than any other place. Saratoga made claims to the contrary, but only Cape May could boast of frequent visits from presidents; several made it their summertime headquarters. The only resort that rivaled Cape May in the quest to be the Summer White House was Long Branch, New Jersey, more than 100 miles north. There was no need for a third resort, especially one in the southern part of the state.

A majority of Cape May’s visitors made the trip by sailing sloop and steamship, though some arrived by stagecoach. Regardless of how one traveled, the trip was expensive and time-consuming. But Cape May’s vacationers were loyal and their resort prospered. It was popular with Trenton’s leaders and most of the legislators believed that if there were to be a railroad to the Jersey Shore, it should be to Cape May.