Barnegat Lighthouse

The barrier islands of this coast were long the seasonal fishing and shellfishing grounds of the Lenape people, whose descendants today include the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape of southern New Jersey. The name Barnegat comes from an early Dutch phrase describing the inlet's rough, breaking water.

The shoals off Barnegat Inlet wrecked so many ships that a lighthouse was built here in the 1830s, but the sea steadily ate away at the beach until the first tower toppled. George Meade designed a taller, stronger replacement set farther back, and its light first shined in 1859. For decades it was a crucial coastal marker, its beam warning ships away from the shoals, until it was retired from active service in the mid-1900s.

After years out of use the tower was restored as the centerpiece of a state park, its light symbolically relit and the grounds opened to visitors. Today Old Barney is one of the most recognizable landmarks on the Jersey Shore, a survivor that has watched the inlet shift around it for well over a century.

The tower stands within a compact state park that wraps the northern tip of the island. A short maritime forest trail winds through one of the last stands of old coastal woodland on Long Beach Island, a tangle of red cedar, holly, and wind-shaped trees that shows what the barrier islands looked like before development.

A long stone jetty runs out toward the inlet, a favorite of surf anglers and a fine place to watch fishing boats thread the channel. Beaches line both the ocean and the calmer bay side, and the point draws seals in winter and shorebirds through much of the year, making the small park far richer than its size suggests.

The climb up Old Barney is the main event, a spiral iron staircase winding up the inside of the tower to a gallery deck near the top. The steps are steep and numerous, but the reward is a commanding view: the inlet churning below, Island Beach State Park stretching north across the water, the bay dotted with boats, and the Atlantic running out to the horizon.

On a clear day you can trace the long thin line of Long Beach Island running south and watch the current rip through the inlet where bay and ocean meet. It is one of the best open vantage points on the whole New Jersey coast.

Summer is the busy season, when the beach towns of Long Beach Island fill and the jetty and beaches draw crowds, though the tip stays wilder than the developed stretches to the south. The warm months bring anglers to the jetty and swimmers to the calmer bay beaches.

Fall brings strong bird migrations and quieter beaches, and winter turns the point stark and windswept, with harbor seals sometimes hauling out on the sand near the inlet. Spring greens the maritime forest and returns the migrating shorebirds, and the tower reopens for the season as the weather warms.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.