ATLANTIC CITY, N. J., city and popular seaside resort in Atlantic County; on the At lantic Ocean and on the Reading and the Penn sylvania railroads, 60 miles southeast of Phil adelphia and 136 miles southwest of New York. It is built on a long, sandy island, known as Absecon Beach, which stretches along the coast for 10 miles; has an average width of three fourths of a mile and is from four to five miles from the mainland. At the north end is the Absecon Light, 160 feet high, well-known to coastwise sailors. The city has several miles of bathing beach, six great recreation piers, a magnificent promenade — the famous "Board Walks of steel and concrete, covered with board flooring, eight miles long,— on the ocean front, nearly 100 hotels and boarding-houses, electric lights, municipal water works, public schools, churches of the principal denominations, seven national banks, and daily, weekly and monthly periodicals. It is probably the most important all-the-year-round resort in the United States, its splendid climate giving it a large popular patronage even in the dead of winter. About
100,000 persons bathe daily in the height of the summer season. The assessed property valua tion exceeds $59,000,000. A fire in April 1902 destroyed many hotels and other buildings and led to a municipal enactment that all structures henceforth erected within the municipal limits must be fireproof. While not known as a manu facturing city, the United States census recorded 105 manufacturing establishments of factory grade, employing 1,230 persons, of whom 917 were wage earners, receiving $614,000 annually in wages. The capital invested aggregated $7, 050,000, and the value of the year's output was $2,908,000; of this, $1,556,000 was the value added by manufacture. Atlantic City was first settled in 1854 on the site of a fishing settle ment dating from 1780. It is governed, subject to referendum and recall, by five commissioners, elected every four years. Pop. 44,461; in summer, about 350,000.