Steel Pier

When Steel Pier opened in 1898, Atlantic City was booming as America's premier seaside resort, and the pier quickly became its grandest attraction. For a single ticket, visitors could spend an entire day and evening on the pier, taking in vaudeville and big-band concerts, dance contests, exhibition halls, movie theaters, and one spectacle after another stretching far out over the water.

The Lenni-Lenape people are the original inhabitants of this coast, having lived along the barrier islands and bays of southern New Jersey for thousands of years before the resort city rose on Absecon Island. Their descendants, including the state-recognized Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape community, remain part of New Jersey today.

The pier's most legendary act was the diving horse. Beginning in the 1920s, a horse and rider would climb a tall tower at the end of the pier and leap together into a deep pool of water below, a heart-stopping stunt that drew crowds for decades and became one of the enduring images of Atlantic City. The pier also hosted the water circus, celebrity performers, and endless novelty acts that made it a national byword for boardwalk entertainment.

Fire and time took their toll. A major fire in 1982 destroyed much of the structure, and the pier fell quiet for a time, mirroring the wider decline of Atlantic City in those years. It was rebuilt as a modern amusement pier and has been reinvented repeatedly since, adding thrill rides, a soaring observation wheel, and new attractions, so that while little of the original survives, the pier itself endures as a living landmark of the shore.

Steel Pier is inseparable from the Atlantic City Boardwalk, the famous wooden promenade that gave the world the very word boardwalk. Built beginning in the 1870s to keep sand out of hotel lobbies, the boardwalk grew into a grand seaside avenue lined with hotels, shops, and amusement piers, of which Steel Pier was the crown. Walking it today, past the taffy stands and the rolling chairs, is to step into an American tradition well over a century old.

In its golden age, Atlantic City drew visitors by the trainload from Philadelphia and New York, and the piers competed to out-dazzle one another. The names of the resort's streets even became the board of the game Monopoly. Steel Pier stood at the center of that world, and though the resort has seen hard times and reinvention, the pier remains a direct link to the era when this was the most celebrated beach in the country.

What sets Steel Pier apart from an ordinary amusement park is the sea beneath it. The rides spin out over open water, and from the top of the great observation wheel the view opens across the whole of Atlantic City, the long line of the boardwalk and its towers, the wide beach, the marshes and bays behind the island, and the Atlantic running to the horizon. On a clear evening the city lights and the dark ocean make a memorable sight.

The beach and ocean around the pier are the same Atlantic that has drawn visitors here for generations. Gulls wheel over the deck, dolphins pass offshore in the warmer months, and the sound and smell of the surf are constant companions. The pier is a place where the thrill of the rides and the vast presence of the sea meet head-on.

Spring sees the pier reawaken as the shore season begins, with milder crowds and the fresh energy of a resort coming back to life along the boardwalk.

Summer is the pier's peak, when Atlantic City fills with beachgoers and the pier runs full tilt into the warm evenings, its rides lit against the dark ocean. It is the classic time to experience it, busy and bright.

Fall brings cooler air, thinner crowds, and beautiful clear light over the water, a fine and calmer time to ride the wheel and walk the boardwalk before the season winds down.

Winter is the quiet season on the shore, with the pier largely closed and the boardwalk swept by ocean wind. Even then, a walk past the shuttered pier with the surf pounding below has its own bracing appeal, and the resort's indoor attractions stay lively year-round.

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