The road to the ocean

In 1870 a retired sea captain named John Arnold built a road from his boarding house to the ocean. People still call it Arnold Avenue. Avontuur stands on it, a hundred and fifty-six years later, and does much the same thing his boarding house did.

Arnold was not finished. In 1875 he helped put the first bridge across the Manasquan River. Then he talked the Central Railroad of New Jersey into extending its line to the shore, handing over the right of way, the land for a depot and about six thousand dollars of his own money. The first passenger train arrived on the third of July, 1880, and the town has been in the business of arrivals ever since.

The borough incorporated in 1886. The first boardwalk went up in 1890 and the sea took it back two years later. The one that stuck was built in 1915 and still runs about a mile along the water.

What the captain built is still the shape of the town. The avenue runs from the railway he bargained for down to the boardwalk that replaced the one the sea took, and Avontuur sits in the middle of it rather than out on the sand.