Jersey Shore Barely Makes Most Beautiful Beach Town List

We are famous for a lot of things here in the Garden State, and way up on the top of that list are our amazing beaches and beach towns, and that is why it's extra upsetting that a list of the 50 best beach towns to live in in America, only one Jersey Shore town made the list, and it's not one of the first few that came to your mind.

It turns out Stacker doesn't show much love for New Jersey in their Top 50 Beach Towns To Live in list. As a matter of fact, the sum of all Garden State towns represented amounts to 2% of the list. Seriously?

You math whizzes knew right away 2% means only one New Jersey town made the list, and no, it's not the town of Cape May. And it's not the ones that may have come to your mind a little closer to home. It's not Avon, Spring Lake, Point Pleasant or Belmar. Spoiler alert...it's not a Monmouth or Ocean County town. And that's a shame.

Jen Ursillo, Townsquare Media NJ

So which New Jersey town made the list? Congratulations to Ocean City in Cape May County for ensuring that the Garden State didn't get completely shut out in this article. So, why Ocean City, and none of the other great beach towns in our state?

The study ranked many different factors, and Ocean City really excelled in two of those categories. They ranked 20th in safety and #24 in quality of life, and those stats put the town in the top 50.

The article doesn't dip below the top 50, so we don't know how close a Monmouth or Ocean town came to making the list, but we can only hope we just missed, That would make us feel a little better.

LOOK: More of the 50 best beach towns in America

Every beach town has its share of pluses and minuses, which got us thinking about what makes a beach town the best one to live in. To find out, Stacker consulted data from WalletHub, released June 17, 2020, that compares U.S. beach towns. Ratings are based on six categories: affordability, weather, safety, economy, education and health, and quality of life. The cities ranged in population from 10,000 to 150,000, but they had to have at least one local beach listed on TripAdvisor. Read the full methodology here. From those rankings, we selected the top 50. Readers who live in California and Florida will be unsurprised to learn that many of towns featured here are in one of those two states.

Keep reading to see if your favorite beach town made the cut.

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To determine the most popular national parks in the United States, Stacker compiled data from the National Park Service on the number of recreational visits each site had in 2020. Keep reading to discover the 50 most popular national parks in the United States, in reverse order from #50 to #1. And be sure to check with individuals parks before you visit to find out about ongoing, pandemic-related safety precautions at www.nps.gov/coronavirus.