Ocean City

We rolled onto the causeway into Ocean City just as the evening crowd was gathering on the boardwalk, funnel cake smell drifting over the dunes, and within minutes Lia had spotted the salt water taffy shop she remembered from a childhood trip decades earlier — Shriver’s, still pulling taffy in the front window exactly as it has since 1898. Founded by Methodist ministers as a camp-meeting retreat, Ocean City has stayed a dry town ever since, no alcohol sold anywhere on the island, which gives its boardwalk a wholesome, old-fashioned energy distinct from its rowdier Jersey Shore neighbors.

The boardwalk

Ocean City’s 2.5-mile boardwalk is the town’s spine, lined with fudge shops, pizza windows, and amusement piers where the smell of the ocean mixes with fryer oil. We rode the Wonder Wheel and a rickety wooden coaster at Gillian’s Wonderland Pier, ate slices at Manco & Manco, whose thin, garlicky pizza locals will argue about fiercely, and watched teenagers race go-karts under strings of lights. Lia insisted on a second lap past the arcades just to hear the mechanical carousel organ one more time before we called it a night.

The beach and the dunes

By day, Ocean City’s beach is wide, clean, and famously well-kept — the town employs beach patrols and tag checks that locals take seriously, a legacy of its careful, family-oriented civic culture. We spent a morning walking north toward the quieter dunes near Corson’s Inlet State Park, where the developed boardwalk gives way abruptly to wild grass-covered dunes and shorebirds working the tideline. The contrast, from carnival lights to untouched inlet in the space of a mile, is one of the things that makes this island unusual among Jersey Shore towns.

Asbury Avenue and the historic district

Away from the water, Asbury Avenue’s pedestrian shopping strip runs through downtown, lined with Victorian-era buildings and shingle-style guesthouses dating to the resort’s founding. We wandered past the Ocean City Historical Museum, learning about the town’s Methodist camp-meeting origins and its long tradition of grand hotels, before finding a quiet ice cream stand a few blocks off the boardwalk where the line was entirely locals rather than day-trippers.

Getting There

Ocean City sits on a barrier island about 10 miles south of Atlantic City, reached via the Route 52 causeway. Atlantic City International Airport is the closest, roughly 25 minutes away, while Philadelphia International Airport is about 90 minutes northwest by car via the Atlantic City Expressway and Garden State Parkway. Parking fills quickly in summer, so many visitors bike or walk once settled in, and NJ Transit buses connect the island to Atlantic City and Philadelphia.