New Jersey has a wild, empty 10-mile beach that looks nothing like the Shore

It’s not the Shore you’re thinking of

Ten miles south of Seaside Heights, the boardwalks and beach bars disappear completely.

What takes their place is 10 miles of open Atlantic beach backed by rolling dunes, salt marsh, and maritime forest, all of it protected inside Island Beach State Park.

This is what the Jersey Shore looked like before anyone built anything on it.

The further you walk, the quieter it gets, and the quieter it gets, the harder it is to believe you’re still in New Jersey.

A steel baron’s resort that the Depression erased

Henry C. Phipps, Andrew Carnegie’s business partner, bought this stretch of barrier island in 1926. He had plans for an exclusive seaside resort, but the Great Depression hit, and then Phipps died in 1930.

The resort never got built. New Jersey bought the 2,694-acre estate in 1953 for $2.75 million and opened it to the public in 1959.

Two Coast Guard stations from 1901 and 1938 still stand inside the park, which means the island’s most visible structures are over a century old.

Ten miles of beach with one guarded swimming area

The ocean-facing beach runs the full 10-mile length of the park.

About one mile in the central section has lifeguard coverage in summer, and surfing is allowed south of that zone.

The southern tip of the park faces Barnegat Inlet, where you can look straight across the water at Barnegat Lighthouse on Long Beach Island.

The beaches here draw far smaller crowds than the commercial shore towns just north. On a summer weekday, you can walk a quarter mile from the parking lot and have the sand mostly to yourself.

New Jersey’s largest osprey colony nests right here

Every spring, ospreys return to the park to nest on platforms you can see from the trails.

The park sits along the Atlantic Flyway, one of four major bird migration routes in the country, so spring and fall bring waves of migrating songbirds, shorebirds, wading birds, and waterfowl through the same stretch of coast.

Peregrine falcons are here too.

The Nature Center runs a live osprey cam so you can watch nesting activity up close, and bay-side observation blinds let you get near the herons and egrets without disturbing them.

Walk the Spizzle Creek Trail to a real bird blind

The Spizzle Creek Trail is flat, sandy, and about three-quarters of a mile long. It cuts through maritime forest and salt marsh, then forks near the end.

One path goes to a bird observation blind, the other drops you at the Barnegat Bay shoreline. From the blind, you can watch ospreys, herons, and other wading birds work the shallows without flushing them.

Interpretive signs along the way explain what you’re walking through.

The park has eight trails in total, all under a mile, each leading to a different section of beach or bay.

Cast a line where the deep troughs run close to shore

Island Beach has a serious reputation among New Jersey saltwater anglers.

Deep-water troughs and cuts run close to the beach here, which puts striped bass, bluefish, flounder, weakfish, and tautog within casting range from the sand.

Tautog fishing along the north jetty at Barnegat Inlet is especially popular when they’re running.

Fishing access in the park runs 24 hours a day, and if you have a 4×4, you can get a Mobile Sport Fishing Vehicle permit for beach access. The southern stretch near the inlet is where most serious anglers set up.

Paddle through New Jersey’s only marine conservation zone

The Sedge Islands Marine Conservation Zone covers roughly 1,600 acres of tidal marshes, creeks, ponds, and open water in Barnegat Bay. Designated in 2001, it’s New Jersey’s first and only zone of its kind.

Park naturalists lead guided kayak and canoe tours through the Sedge Islands, where nesting ospreys, falcons, and wading birds are easy to spot.

You can launch kayaks and stand-up paddleboards from the bay-side access points. The calmer bay waters are also good for crabbing and clamming if you’d rather stay close to shore.

An island education center inside a century-old duck lodge

Out in Barnegat Bay, reachable by a short boat ride from the park, sits the Sedge Island Natural Resource Education Center.

It operates inside a renovated duck hunting lodge that’s more than 100 years old and is surrounded by one of the densest osprey nesting areas in New Jersey.

The center runs residential environmental education programs for ages 12 and up, with hands-on field activities, seining, kayaking, and nighttime exploration of the bay.

The New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife runs the programs.

Over 400 plant species growing in nine different ecosystems

The park has more than 400 identified plant species spread across nine distinct plant communities. Beach heather, beach plum, and bayberry hold the primary dunes in place along the ocean side.

Behind them, a maritime forest of pitch pine, American holly, and black cherry grows in shapes the salt spray and Atlantic winds have spent decades sculpting.

The park contains the largest stands of beach heather in New Jersey.

At the Forked River Interpretive Center, the Emily DeCamp Herbarium holds about 400 classified plant specimens that you can actually handle and examine.

Red foxes on the dunes and terrapins in the marsh

Red foxes are a regular sight in the park, particularly in the dunes and along the main road.

You’re not guaranteed a sighting, but visitors spot them often enough that it’s worth slowing down when you drive through.

Over on the bay side, the tidal marshes pull in blue crabs, herons, egrets, and diamondback terrapins, which use the warm, shallow water year-round.

The Barnegat Bay side acts as a feeding ground that draws wildlife in numbers the ocean beach can’t match. Keep your distance and don’t feed anything you see.

Bikes, horses, divers, and wheelchairs all have a place here

The park’s eight-mile main road is open to biking, though the shoulder is narrow. Horseback riding is allowed on the southern six miles of ocean beach from October through April, by reservation.

The Fisherman’s Walkway at parking area 7 is a wheelchair-accessible boardwalk that connects the ocean and the bay.

Scuba diving and underwater fishing are permitted along 2.5 miles of ocean beach north of Barnegat Inlet, and surf chairs with beach access ramps are available at several ocean beach areas for visitors with mobility needs.

The shore that time didn’t get to

When Henry Hudson described the New Jersey coast from the Half Moon in 1609, the barrier island looked something like this.

Island Beach State Park is one of the very few undeveloped barrier beaches left on the entire north Atlantic coast.

What the development boom of the 20th century did to the rest of the Jersey Shore, it never got to do here. Summer weekends fill the parking lots fast, so arriving early matters.

But come in the off-season, walk the empty winter beach south toward the inlet, and you’ll see a stretch of coast that’s been waiting there for centuries.

Visit Island Beach State Park in New Jersey

You can find Island Beach State Park at the southern end of Route 35 in Berkeley Township, Ocean County.

The Forked River Interpretive Center and Nature Center sit about seven miles into the park and have educational exhibits, the live osprey cam, and the Emily DeCamp Herbarium.

The park is open year-round, though hours and services vary by season. Parking fees apply.

Summer weekends fill up early, so a morning arrival gives you the best shot at a spot. Check the official website for current hours, fees, and program schedules before you go.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

Read more from this brand:

• A shipwreck dumped 20,000 coconuts on Florida’s coast and built Palm Beach
• No condos, no souvenir shops — just sea oats and silence at this Florida Panhandle beach
• America’s longest wild beach is in South Texas and almost no one knows it exists