Belmar

Belmar is the busy, youth-heavy beach town on the south side of the Shark River inlet, the loud middle between quieter Avon and Spring Lake. The draw is a wide clean beach, a 1.3-mile boardwalk, a marina on the Shark River, and a downtown bar and restaurant strip that runs harder than its neighbors. It pulls a summer crowd that comes to surf, fish, and go out at night.

History The Lenni-Lenape fished the south shore of the Shark River long before settlers arrived, and salt works ran along the river by the 1750s until a British raid destroyed them in 1778. The town was incorporated in the 1880s as Ocean Beach and renamed Belmar, meaning beautiful sea, around 1890. It grew into a rail-served summer resort. Its defining modern moment came in October 2012, when Sandy destroyed the boardwalk and the borough rebuilt all 1.3 miles by the next Memorial Day.

What makes it unique Belmar carries a split identity. By day it reads as a family beach and fishing town: clean sand, surf breaks, and a marina full of head boats. By summer night it becomes one of the louder nightlife and rental scenes around, which is why it feels rowdier than buttoned-up Spring Lake or residential Avon. People come for that energy or steer around it.