What’s inside a 90-ton elephant on the New Jersey beach? Climb up and find out

She’s America’s oldest roadside attraction

A six-story elephant made of wood and tin stands on the beach in Margate City, New Jersey, about five miles south of Atlantic City.

Her name is Lucy, she weighs 90 tons, and people have been climbing inside her for more than 140 years.

She’s a National Historic Landmark, the oldest surviving roadside attraction in the country, and she sits right there in Josephine Harron Park where the sand meets the sidewalk.

What you find when you climb up through her leg is worth every step.

A real estate trick from 1881 started it all

Philadelphia developer James V. Lafferty had a problem in 1881. He owned undeveloped beachfront in what was then called South Atlantic City, and nobody was buying.

So he built a giant elephant. He hired William Free to design it and J. Mason Kirby to build it, spending somewhere between $25,000 and $38,000.

The plan worked well enough that by December 1882, Lafferty held a U.S. patent giving him exclusive rights to build animal-shaped buildings for 17 years.

Nearly one million pieces of wood hold her together

Lucy stands six stories high, stretches 60 feet long, and measures 18 feet across.

Her builders used 200 kegs of nails and four tons of bolts and iron bars to hold the frame together, then covered the whole thing in 12,000 square feet of tin sheeting. Nearly one million pieces of wood make up her skeleton.

She has 22 windows scattered across her body, and her shape follows the proportions of an Asian elephant. Nothing else in America looks like her.

Two sister elephants came and went long ago

Lafferty didn’t stop with Lucy. He built two more elephant-shaped buildings after her.

The Elephantine Colossus rose 122 feet at Coney Island in Brooklyn, roughly twice Lucy’s size, and held hotel rooms, a cigar store, and a diorama before fire destroyed it in 1896.

A third elephant called the Light of Asia went up in Cape May, New Jersey, and lasted until demolition in 1900. Lucy is the only one of the three still standing today.

From real estate office to tavern to tourist stop

Lafferty originally called her Elephant Bazaar and used it as his real estate office.

He would bring potential buyers up to the howdah on her back and point out available land stretching in every direction. The strategy didn’t save him.

He went broke by 1887 and sold Lucy and the surrounding property to Anton Gertzen. In 1902, Sophia Gertzen gave the elephant her name.

Over the decades, Lucy served as a summer home, a tavern, and a roadside curiosity.

Thirty days to save her or lose her forever

By the 1960s, Lucy had fallen apart. The city scheduled her for demolition.

In 1969, Edwin T. Carpenter and a group of Margate residents formed the Save Lucy Committee, but the city gave them just 30 days to move her or cover the cost of tearing her down.

Volunteers knocked on doors across Margate to raise the money.

On July 20, 1970, crews moved all 90 tons of Lucy about 100 yards down Atlantic Avenue to city-owned land.

Steel reinforcement and a glass plug brought her back

After the move, Lucy sat closed for four years while crews reinforced her wooden frame with steel. Workers rebuilt the howdah and set a plug of green glass into the platform that refracts light down into her interior.

She reopened for tours in 1974. The National Register of Historic Places added her in 1971, and in 1976, during the nation’s Bicentennial, she earned designation as a National Historic Landmark.

Lucy had her second life.

Hurricanes and lightning couldn’t knock her down

A hurricane in 1903 forced workers to relocate Lucy about 50 feet farther from the shore. In 1944, another hurricane destroyed much of the Margate boardwalk, but Lucy held.

In 2006, lightning struck her directly, and she came through.

When Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy made landfall near Brigantine in 2012, just north of Margate, Lucy took no structural or water damage. The community started calling her a symbol of resilience after that.

A $2.4 million skin replacement saved her exterior

A 2021 inspection found that more than half of Lucy’s metal skin had degraded beyond repair. She closed in September 2021 for a full exterior restoration.

Crews replaced deteriorating sections of her wooden frame and installed all-new metal sheeting. The National Park Service and the New Jersey Historic Trust helped fund the $2.4 million project.

Lucy reopened in December 2022 with a fresh exterior for the first time in decades.

Interior work and a new visitor center are on the way

The inside still needs attention. Plans call for replacing the aging HVAC and fire suppression systems, refinishing wood floors, repainting woodwork, and repairing water-damaged plaster walls.

In March 2026, the Save Lucy Committee secured a $350,000 federal grant to help fund the interior restoration.

A new ADA-accessible visitor center with a gift shop, restrooms, and exhibits is also going up next to Lucy, with completion expected in 2027.

Climb the spiral staircase inside her hind leg

You enter Lucy through a spiral staircase inside one of her hind legs.

Inside, you watch a short video about her history and see artifacts from the original 1881 construction. You can look out through Lucy’s eyes for a view you won’t get anywhere else.

The tour ends at the howdah on her back, an open-air platform with 360-degree views of the ocean, beach, and Margate skyline. The whole thing takes about 20 to 25 minutes.

A beach landmark that’s lasted 140 years and counting

Lucy sits right on the sand, and the surrounding park has picnic tables and a fence that makes it easy to keep track of kids. The park carries the name of Josephine Harron, a co-founder of the Save Lucy Committee.

Margate’s beaches are close by, with clean sand and gentle waves.

Every year, Lucy’s birthday falls on the Saturday closest to July 20, the anniversary of her 1970 move, with food, rides, and games.

Visit Lucy the Elephant in Margate, New Jersey

You can find Lucy at 9200 Atlantic Ave. at the corner of Atlantic and Decatur avenues in Margate City. The grounds and gift shop are free.

Guided tours inside Lucy require a ticket, and active military members with valid ID get in free. Hours change by season, so check the official website before you go.

Margate City sits about five miles south of Atlantic City and roughly 60 miles southeast of Philadelphia, so you can pair Lucy with a boardwalk trip the same day.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

Read more from this brand:

• New Jersey’s 90-ton elephant has stood on the beach since 1881 — and you can climb inside her
• America’s oldest roadside attraction is an elephant standing on a beach in Margate City, NJ
• Five U.S. presidents vacationed in this tiny New Jersey beach town and it shows