Wildwood Crest

Wildwood Crest — The Southern End of Five Mile Beach in 1944

The 1944 aerial of Wildwood Crest — taken after the Great Atlantic Hurricane of September 1944 — captures this quiet, family-oriented southern end of Five Mile Beach at a moment of crisis. Wildwood Crest is the most protected of the Wildwood communities from ocean erosion (it benefits from the enormous beach Wildwood is building to the north), but the 1944 hurricane still caused significant structural damage and beach erosion at the southern tip near Cape May Inlet. The orderly grid of Wildwood Crest's streets and the contrast between the wide beach and the hurricane-damaged oceanfront structures are clearly readable from this aerial view.