Sandy Hook

Sandy Hook — Fort Hancock and a Growing Peninsula

The 1920 aerial shows Sandy Hook as a U.S. Army post: Fort Hancock's brick barracks and gun batteries cluster at the northern tip, surrounded by the widest beach on the Monmouth coast. Between ocean and bay, the peninsula was already measurably longer than it had been a generation before — longshore drift carries sand northward and deposits it here year after year. By 1933, the Hook had grown further: compare the very tip of the peninsula in both aerials and the accretion is unmistakable. The 1962 view captures Sandy Hook just after the catastrophic Ash Wednesday Storm, which overwashed the lower hook and temporarily closed road access to the fort — yet the beach itself remained one of the widest on the coast, fed continuously by sand swept up from the south.