Shore Chronicles: Diaries and Traveler's Tales from the Jersey Shore

Contemporary shore-lovers will find Shore Chronicles an enlightening and remarkable book, providing a fascinating historical perspective on the region. Illustrated with 50 historic photographs, etchings and fine art images, this comprehensive collection begins with adventure travel in 1764 when the shore (and much of New Jersey) was still a wild frontier. The book concludes with the opening of the Garden State Parkway, which brought exponentially more visitors and rapid development to the Jersey Shore.

A total of 50 accounts include writing by such well-known figures as John J. Audubon, Walt Whitman, Robert Louis Stevenson, Stephen Crane and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But perhaps most interesting are the selections from private journals, letters and diaries from unknowns vacationing or visiting the shore.