History and mysteries · Harvey Cedars and Long Beach Island
The 1962 storm: high ground in a town cut by water (1962)
Documented history · Sources compared
Repeated tides opened new channels across Harvey Cedars while residents took shelter in a former hotel on higher ground.
Damage renewed with each tide
The March 1962 Ash Wednesday storm was an extratropical northeaster, not a hurricane. The National Park Service describes a system that lingered through repeated high tides. Its forty deaths and roughly one thousand injuries cover six states, not New Jersey alone.
In Harvey Cedars, historian Margaret Thomas Buchholz describes a sequence of losses: dunes and bulkheads first, then the beach, then houses and roads as water repeatedly crossed the island. Her account places new channels at 79th Street and Bergen Avenue.
Shelter and an altered town
About fifty people sheltered at the Bible Conference, a former hotel built on higher ground. Others returned after helicopter evacuation. Buchholz recounts residents finding homes destroyed and insurance that often excluded water damage.
Her municipal history connects rebuilding to subdivision of large properties and replacement housing. That is a local account of the storm’s aftermath, distinct from the regional weather summary. Together they show how prolonged flooding changed both the island’s physical shape and the decisions people made afterward.
Sources and research limits
National Park Service, Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962, regional summary. Margaret Thomas Buchholz, History of Harvey Cedars, 1962 storm and rebuilding section, published by the borough.