Located between Loveladies and North Beach, Harvey Cedars is situated on one of the narrowest portions of Long Beach Island. The community is primarily residential yet has less than 400 full time residents. Its commercial area is smaller than what you can find further north and south of town but there are a few places to shop and eat.
Most visitors come to Harvey Cedars to relax at a home, either their own or one they are renting, and to enjoy the beach. There are no hotels in Harvey Cedars.
Beach Badge Information
Beach tags are required on the ocean and bay beaches for everyone 12 and older. Badges are needed from June through Labor Day. The 2009 rates for badges are:
seasonal badge - $35
weekly badge - $20, Saturday through Friday
daily badge - $6
senior badge - $9 - 65 years young and over (proof of age is required)
Beach badges are sold at the Beach Badge Booth in Sunset Park.
Access to the beach
The east-west streets that end at the beach all provide an entrance to the beach. Parking is available on most of these streets. There is also parking at the Sunset Park parking area (West Salem Ave) and in front of the public works yard (at Salem Ave and Passaic Ave).
A children's bay beach is located at 77th Street.
Showers and restrooms are available on West Salem Ave in Sunset Park.
Around Town
A few interesting places around Harvey Cedars.
Sunset Park
This bayside park can be a busy place in the summer. Besides being the place to buy your beach badges it also has a children's playground, a ballfield, picnic tables, a walkway jutting out over the bay, tennis courts, a basketball court and public restrooms.
A view of the Gazebo and walkway that overlooks Barnegat Bay
A part of the playground located in Harvey Cedars' Sunset Park
Barnegat Light Yacht Club
Located at Barnegat Bay, between 75th and 76th Street. There has been a yacht club in this area since the late 1800's. The current club began as a meeting in a local home in 1928. The members decided to call their organization the High Point Yacht Club. Within a few years the members had purchased the current club property, paying $2000 for the land. A building was then commissioned and built, which is the structure that is still found there today. The name was changed to Barnegat Light Yacht Club in 1932.
While it may seem odd to name the club after the more northerly town, Barnegat Light was actually named Barnegat City during that time (the town name was changed in the 1950's).
Long Beach Island Fishing Club
Anyone that has traveled through Harvey Cedars cannot have helped but notice the Fishing Club (Long Beach Boulevard and Cape May Avenue). The property is striking because of the building and the fact it sits on a piece of land that is largely open space. Both of these are unusual to see in this day and age on Long Beach Island. Few causal visitors may know that it is a fishing club or why the distinctive building is there.
Harvey Cedars was the site of the first federally funded coastal shipwreck service buildings. Once this federal project become the Life Saving Service (the beginnings of the Coast Guard) the first building on this location was moved to Beach Haven. That was in 1871. A new Life Saving Station was then built, which is the building you still see today. In the mid 1900's the Coast Guard decommissioned the property and the fishing club paid for and took over the facility.
The Harvey Cedars Hotel
High Point was the original name of the area where the first Harvey Cedars hotel was found. The first hotel was more of a rooming house than a hotel. It was also one of the first of its kind at the Jersey shore, what we now know as a sportmen's hotel. Records from the 1870's show there being an established hotel called Kinsey's. Sometime prior to that there was a smaller place that was a rooming house. It is not clear if the early history of the spot being settled extends to the 1850's or the 1830's but there is no doubt that whenever someone first built there that it was one of the earliest built structures on LBI.
The modern form of the hotel was constructed from an expanded 1870 building that was made into a 3 story structure in 1903. It then went out of business in 1910. After serving as a girls camp for the YMCA, then being abandoned for a decade, it was purchased by Presbyterian minister Jack Murray. He converted it into the Harvey Cedars Presbyterian Bible Conference. This name was later changed to its present form - Harvey Cedars Bible Conference.
Despite the outward appearance of some parts of the building remaining the same as its original 1903 form, a series of renovations during the 1990's and 2000's have changed the make up of the hotel. Today it is a mixture of old and newer (replaced) elements.