Atlantic City in 1 day: the Boardwalk, the Monopoly streets and Lucy

If you have played Monopoly, you already know Atlantic City: the squares on the American board are its real streets, and the most expensive square of all — the one called Park Place in English — is called Boardwalk, which is the wooden promenade running along the beach. It is a city that invented many things: the first wooden boardwalk in the world, the Miss America pageant, saltwater taffy, and the first American casino outside of Nevada. It also experienced a hard decline, and it does not hide it. You come here for a day, and a day is enough.

Morning — The Boardwalk and the pier

4 km · 2 stops · from 10 to 13:30 · always on wood

1 — The wooden promenade

Time · 2 hours · Free · Wheelchair pushed by hand · about $20 for a section

The Boardwalk of Atlantic City is the first wooden promenade ever built in the world, born in 1870 for a prosaic reason: hotel owners were tired of guests bringing sand into their rooms and onto trains. The solution was a removable platform along the beach, which in winter was taken down and put away. It worked so well that all beach resorts in America copied it, and the common name for that type of promenade remained boardwalk.

Today it is about six kilometers long, with casino towers on one side and the ocean on the other. You can walk, or have yourself pushed in a rolling chair, the three-wheeled wicker chairs pushed by hand that have existed here since 1887: they were born for sick people who came to “get the sea air” and became a tourist transport.

Try the saltwater taffy, the pulled taffy candy that is an institution here since 1880. The name, local legend says, was born from a storm surge that flooded a kiosk: the vendor, as a joke, told a customer that he now had only “salt water candy.” There is no seawater in it, but the name stuck.

2 — Steel Pier

Time · 1.5 hours · Free entry, rides are pay-per-token, panoramic wheel about $15 · Seasonal

Steel Pier is an amusement pier that has entered the ocean since 1898. In its golden age, between the 1920s and 1950s, it was called the biggest show on earth: Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington and the Beatles played there, and there was an attraction that would be unthinkable today, the diving horse, a horse that jumped from a platform twelve meters high into a tank of water with a girl in the saddle. It went on from 1929 to 1978, when animal rights protests closed it.

Today it is a normal amusement park, with rides and a forty-meter-high panoramic wheel overlooking the water, from which you can see the entire coast. The entrance is free: you pay for the rides.

Midday — The lighthouse and the Monopoly streets

2 km · 2 stops · from 13:30 to 16 · lunch included

3 — Absecon Lighthouse

Time · 1 hour · Ticket · about $10 · 228 steps · closed some weekdays out of season

The Absecon Lighthouse is from 1857, it is forty-six meters high and is the tallest lighthouse in New Jersey and the third in the United States. It was designed by George Meade, the same military engineer who six years later would command the Union Army at Gettysburg. You climb 228 steps and the original lens is still in place: from up there you can understand the shape of the city, which sits on a narrow island between ocean and lagoon.

4 — The streets of Monopoly

Time · 1 hour, walking · Free

In 1933, Charles Darrow, an unemployed man from Philadelphia, perfected the version of the game that would become Monopoly, and for the squares he used the streets of Atlantic City, where he had spent his vacations. The American board is still that one: Baltic Avenue and Mediterranean Avenue are the two cheapest squares and they are real streets, today in a poor area of the city; Ventnor, Pacific and Park Place all exist; and the most expensive square is the Boardwalk.

There is also a mistake that became history: the square Marvin Gardens is actually Marven Gardens, a neighborhood between Margate and Ventnor whose name comes from the merger of Margate and Ventnor. The typo was made in 1933 and Parker Brothers only officially apologized in 1995, without correcting it.

Walking on Pacific Avenue and reading the names of the side streets is a game that lasts half an hour and is quite entertaining. Do not expect beauty: Baltic and Mediterranean are two run-down streets, and it is part of the story.

Afternoon — Lucy, the elephant

1 km · 1 stop · from 16 to 18 · 15 minutes by car or bus heading south

5 — Lucy the Elephant

Time · 1 hour · Guided tour · about $12 · Margate City, 10 km to the south · closed during some winter periods

Six kilometers south along the coast, in Margate, there is an elephant six stories high. It is called Lucy, it is made of wood and tin plate, weighs ninety tons and has been there since 1881. A real estate developer, James Lafferty, built it with a simple idea: to attract buyers to the sandy land he wanted to sell. He also had the idea of building buildings in the shape of animals patented and won.

In the belly you climb a spiral staircase inside a hind leg, and from the platform on the back you see the ocean. Over the years it was a private home, a hotel and a speakeasy during Prohibition. In 1970 it was reduced to a ruin and was about to be demolished: a citizens’ committee collected the money and had it moved on a trailer for three blocks to the public land where it is today. It is a national historic monument and is the oldest roadside tourist attraction in America still standing.

Lucy is visited only with a guide, at fixed times and in small groups. Out of season the tours are few and on summer weekends there are lines: check the times before you head out.

Evening — The casinos, and the story behind them

2 km · 1 stop · from 18 to 23

6 — The towers by the sea

Time · 4 hours with dinner · Free entry, minimum 21 years with ID · on foot on the Boardwalk

In 1976 New Jersey approved gambling by referendum, but with one constraint: only in Atlantic City. It was an attempt to save a city that had been in free fall since the 1960s, emptied by air travel and air conditioning, which made going to the beach less necessary. The first casino opened in 1978: it was the first in the United States outside of Nevada, and it worked for a decade.

Then gambling was legalized almost everywhere, and Atlantic City lost its monopoly: in 2014 alone, four casinos closed. Some have been reopened under different names, others remain empty towers on the waterfront. Walking through you notice the contrast: glittering rooms on one side, abandoned blocks two streets behind. It is a city you visit for this reason as well, not only despite this reason.

The most famous story is that of Prohibition: Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, the county’s political boss, kept the city open to alcohol, gambling and prostitution while America was dry, and in 1929 he hosted here the first major national meeting of the heads of the American underworld, with Capone and Luciano sitting together. It is the story that inspired Boardwalk Empire.

Also worth knowing: the Miss America pageant was born here in 1921, not for romantic reasons: hotel owners wanted a reason to keep tourists around past the first week of September.

How to get there

From Philadelphia it is about one hour by car along the Atlantic City Expressway, and it is the most natural day trip: Philadelphians have always gone there. From New York it is two and a half hours, and in this case it is worth inserting it into a journey south rather than doing it back and forth in one day.

Without a car: buses connect Atlantic City with New York and Philadelphia several times a day and arrive at the terminal downtown, two blocks from the Boardwalk; there is also a train from Philadelphia. In the city, blue jitneys circulate, minibuses that pass continuously along Pacific Avenue and reach Margate: they cost a few dollars and are the right way to reach Lucy without a car.

Frequently asked questions