NJ shore towns that belong to townships miles away

I have been a map geek my entire life. Long before GPS, long before Google Maps and Waze and the little blue dot that tells you exactly where you are, I was just a guy who liked paper maps. The kind you can never fold back up correctly. The kind with the county index in the corner and the little red stars for the county seats.

Early in my career at WPST, we had a map on the studio wall. When listeners called in, we would stick a pin in it. I loved that map. I loved seeing where people were calling from — the towns I knew, the towns I had never heard of, the little dots at the end of county roads that barely had names. Ong’s Hat was an early fascination.  Still is!

New Jersey is a small state and somehow it never ran out of surprises.

It still does not. Because the more I look at this map, the stranger it gets.

A few months ago I wrote about New Jersey's weirdest municipal borders — the towns inside towns, the three-piece municipalities, the Salem County land that technically belongs to Delaware. The response told me you are just as fascinated by this stuff as I am. So here is the next chapter. These are the New Jersey shore communities that sit on barrier islands and bay peninsulas — but answer to townships on the mainland that can barely see them across the water.

SEE ALSO: NJ's weirdest boarders — towns inside towns and land that isn't ours 

Toms River Township: One Town, Three Pieces, Separated by a Bay

Toms River Township is the best example in the state and most people who live there do not fully appreciate how strange the map actually is.

The township exists in three separate census-designated areas. The mainland section is where almost everyone lives — more than 95 percent of the township's population, the shopping centers, the schools, the municipal building. Then there are Dover Beaches North and Dover Beaches South on the Barnegat Peninsula, physically separated from the mainland by Barnegat Bay.

Dover Beaches South is better known as Ortley Beach. It sits between Lavallette to the north and Seaside Heights to the south — and here is where it gets truly odd. Lavallette is its own separate borough sitting in the middle of the barrier island, which means Toms River Township's two barrier island sections are not even connected to each other. To get from Dover Beaches North to Ortley Beach while staying in Toms River Township, you cannot do it. You have to pass through Lavallette.

So Toms River Township is a mainland municipality with two barrier island neighborhoods that are separated from the mainland by a bay and separated from each other by a different town entirely. The township manages beaches, provides services and sends bills to residents who can only reach their own municipality by crossing water or driving through someone else's.

I found this staring at a map. It took me a while to convince myself I was reading it correctly.

Strathmere: 137 People, One Township, One Very Long Legal Fight

Strathmere sits on Ludlam Island between Ocean City and Sea Isle City. It is fourteen blocks long and two blocks wide. As of the last census, 137 people call it home year-round. It is one of my favorite Shore spots — the free beach, Twisties, the feeling that the rest of the Jersey Shore forgot it existed and left it exactly as it should be.

Strathmere is part of Upper Township. The township seat and most of Upper Township's residents are on the mainland, miles away. Strathmere residents decided years ago that this arrangement was not working for them. They petitioned to leave Upper Township. The case went to the New Jersey Supreme Court. In 2013 the court said no.

So Strathmere stays in Upper Township. One hundred thirty-seven people on a barrier island, governed from the mainland, their breakaway attempt rejected by the highest court in the state. There is a whole piece in just that story alone.

The one thing Upper Township gets right is the beach. Strathmere is one of only five municipalities in New Jersey where you can swim at a lifeguarded oceanfront beach without paying for a badge. Atlantic City, North Wildwood, Wildwood, Wildwood Crest and Strathmere. That is the whole list.

Diamond Beach: The Cash Cow at the End of Five Mile Island

Diamond Beach sits at the southern tip of Five Mile Island, tucked between Wildwood Crest and the Cape May National Wildlife Refuge. It is less than two-tenths of a square mile. You could walk its entire length in minutes.

Diamond Beach is not part of adjacent Wildwood Crest. It is part of Lower Township, whose mainland center is miles away in the direction of Cape May Court House and Rio Grande and the farms and campgrounds of the interior. One prominent Diamond Beach resident put it plainly in print — Diamond Beach to Lower Township is nothing but a cash cow. The ratables on that tiny strip of oceanfront condominiums and resort properties are enormous relative to the community's size. The township collects the revenue. The community has spent years arguing about whether it gets the services to match.

It is a classic New Jersey tension — a shore community with an identity and an economy of its own, attached by the accident of history to a mainland township that governs it from a distance.

South Seaside Park: The One That Got Out

I wrote about this in March and it is worth revisiting here because it is the exception that proves the rule.

South Seaside Park was a neighborhood on the barrier island that belonged to Berkeley Township — a township whose mainland is separated from the island by Barnegat Bay. South Seaside Park had no land connection to the township it legally belonged to. Residents wanted out for years. In March, Seaside Park voted 5-0 to absorb it. A consulting firm projected property tax decreases of 40 to 51 percent — later revised to 8 percent after a counting error, which a Berkeley councilman described as putting a puzzle together without all the pieces.

But they got out. South Seaside Park is now part of Seaside Park, a town it can actually touch. It is the rarest outcome in New Jersey municipal geography.

Why This Keeps Happening

New Jersey has 564 municipalities. It created most of them in the 1800s when the map looked nothing like it does now — before the barrier islands were developed, before the bridges, before any of this was worth governing from the mainland. The townships drew their lines, the shore communities grew up inside them, and nobody ever went back and straightened the map out.

Some of those communities have spent decades trying to leave. Some went to the Supreme Court. Some are still there, paying taxes to townships they can only reach by crossing water, governed by people who have never stood on their beach.

I still stare at maps. New Jersey still surprises me every time.