Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times And Corruption of Atlantic City (3 page)

But even the Leeds family had trouble believing Pitney could ever make anything of Absecon Island. The island that existed in 1850, as Pitney wrote in his letters, consisted “almost exclusively of fine white sand, piled in hills like snowdrifts.” There were “several ridges found on these old beaches separated by long, narrow valleys in which were found coarse grasses, rushes, low bushes, and vines in addition to oak, cedar, and holly timber.” The summit of one of these sand dunes was more than 50 feet high. The island was covered with a growth of trees: “wild fruits, beach plums, fox grapes, and huckleberries were found abundantly in some places.”

Less appealing than the holly trees and wild fruits were the insects. Between the months of June and September, the mosquitoes and greenhead flies ruled the island. During the summer, whenever the ocean breeze subsided, the greenhead flies were everywhere. They were so large they cast a shadow as they swarmed about their victims. These flies were nasty creatures and the pain of their bites lingered for days. Cider vinegar was the only lotion that helped ease the sting. Absecon Island may have been a pristine wilderness, but it wasn’t a vacationer’s paradise or a place one would think of as a health resort. No one reading Pitney’s letters who was familiar with South Jersey’s barrier islands could have taken him seriously.

With no success from his letter campaign, Pitney decided to pursue a railroad charter by presenting his idea to the state legislature. The right to construct a rail line would give him credibility with investors. In 1851 he made several trips to Trenton to meet with political leaders and lobby for his railroad. The trips by horseback were long and lonely, and the reception wasn’t friendly.

The legislators labeled his idea “Pitney’s folly.” They rejected it with almost no debate and ridiculed it as the “Railroad to Nowhere.” The consensus of the legislature was that it wasn’t possible for a new seacoast resort to compete with Cape May, which was America’s first seashore resort. Wealthy businessmen from Philadelphia and Baltimore, as well as plantation owners and tobacco brokers from Maryland and Virginia, had been vacationing in Cape May since the 1790s and there was no reason to believe that would change.

Cape May had evolved from a sportsman’s fishing village where the upper class went to “rough it.” Staying overnight in cedar log beach houses and tents, these early vacationers spent their days fishing and hunting waterfowl. With the help of slaves, visitors prepared their own meals and passed the evenings gathered around campfires. Over the next several decades, businessmen from Philadelphia and Delaware constructed hotels and boardinghouses, extending the pleasures of a summer vacation at Cape May’s beach to the less hardy.

One visitor to Cape May in the summer of 1850 wrote to her readers at home describing the “parti-colored scene” created by the new sport of “seabathing.” She reported that thousands of people, “men, women and children, in red, blue, and yellow pantaloons and yellow straw hats adorned with bright red ribbon, go out into the sea in crowds, and leap up and down in the heaving waves amid great laughter and merriment.” The reporter, Swedish novelist and travel writer Frederika Bremer (1801–1865), reporting on the scene at Cape May’s beach continued, “White and black people, horses and carriages, and dogs—all are there, one among another, and just before them great fishes, porpoises, lift up their heads, and sometime take a huge leap, very likely because they are so amused at seeing human beings leaping about in their own element.”

In pre-Civil War days, Cape May was renowned as a “Southern resort” and was a mecca for the cream of Southern society. Southern planters and the elite of the North brought their gleaming horse-drawn carriages and paraded in the sun along the water’s edge. Nationally celebrated bands performed for the ladies in the fine hotels, while the men passed their time gambling. The most popular gambling house was
The Blue Pig
—for “gentlemen” only.

By 1850, no resort in America could compare to the Jersey Cape in terms of attracting the rich and famous. More national figures made Cape May their summer retreat than any other place. Saratoga made claims to the contrary, but only Cape May could boast of frequent visits from presidents; several made it their summertime headquarters. The only resort that rivaled Cape May in the quest to be the Summer White House was Long Branch, New Jersey, more than 100 miles north. There was no need for a third resort, especially one in the southern part of the state.

A majority of Cape May’s visitors made the trip by sailing sloop and steamship, though some arrived by stagecoach. Regardless of how one traveled, the trip was expensive and time-consuming. But Cape May’s vacationers were loyal and their resort prospered. It was popular with Trenton’s leaders and most of the legislators believed that if there were to be a railroad to the Jersey Shore, it should be to Cape May.

Another obstacle facing Pitney was the monopoly of the Camden-Amboy Railroad. In 1832 the legislature gave this North Jersey-based railroad an exclusive right-of-way across the state. While the Camden-Amboy had no plans to construct a railroad in South Jersey, the legislators were not about to permit someone like Pitney to get into the railroad business. Having neither financial resources nor the right political contacts, Pitney’s idea for linking Philadelphia to an obscure, undeveloped island was nonsense. In rejecting his idea, the legislators asked, “Whoever heard of a railroad with only one end?”

Pitney’s humiliation before the state legislature forced a change in his strategy. He quit trying for popular support and set about selling his idea to the rich and powerful. In the mid-19th century, the elite of South Jersey were the bog iron and glass barons. A dozen or so families, these barons controlled most of the wealth, owned nearly all of the undeveloped land, and employed almost anyone who wasn’t a farmer or fisherman. Pitney cited the need of iron and glass factories for better transportation and argued that their goods could be shipped more cheaply by the iron horse. Things began to happen for Jonathan Pitney when he won the support of Samuel Richards.

The name “Richards” cast a spell. From the American Colonial era to the Civil War, the Richards family was the most influential in southern New Jersey. Centered in villages of Hammonton and Batsto, the Richards’ empire included iron works, glass furnaces, cotton mills, paper factories, brickyards, and farms. As a family, the Richards were among the largest landholders in the Eastern United States for several generations. At their peak the Richards’ family holdings collectively totaled more than one-quarter million acres.

Samuel Richards, as one biographer noted, “looked like a bank president and worked like a horse. For all his handsome appearance and meticulous dress, no task was too small, no problem too intricate for him to tackle personally.” Richards was a buccaneer-type entrepreneur who lived the high life. He owned a beautiful mansion with sprawling grounds and servants in South Jersey, as well as a palatial Victorian home in Philadelphia. He was part of the aristocracy. Vital to Pitney’s dreams, Samuel Richards understood the importance of a rail line between Philadelphia and Absecon Island. He saw the economic potential of Pitney’s railroad and realized it could make his family even wealthier.

Railroading was high adventure for entrepreneurs in the 19th century, and Samuel Richards was anxious to become an investor. More than anything else, it was the rise of the railroad that transformed the American economy in the 1840s and ’50s. The development of railroads throughout the country had an enormous effect on the economy as a whole. While the demand for iron rails was first met mainly by importation from England, the railroads, in time, spurred development of America’s iron industry. Because railroads required a huge outlay of capital, their promoters pioneered new methods for financing business. At a time when most manufacturing and commercial concerns were still owned by families or private partnerships, the railroads formed corporations and sold stock to the general public. This type of financing set the pattern for investment, which led to the creation of the modern corporation. Railroads were a catalyst to economic growth the likes of which the country had never known.

Richards knew that a rail line linking his landholdings to Philadelphia would increase their value and make it possible for him to turn some of his vast acreage into cash. Even if a land boom didn’t materialize, Richards and his fellow businessmen would still benefit from reduced costs of transporting their glass and iron. At the time, goods manufactured in South Jersey were shipped to Philadelphia by horse and wagon over sandy trails, which were often impassable in bad weather.

Samuel Richards latched onto Pitney’s idea and all but made it his own. Richards took charge of the lobbying effort for the railroad charter. At the time he was approached by Pitney, Samuel Richards had just turned 30 years old. But his family’s name alone was enough to get the attention of the state legislature. Richards made a sales pitch that his Republican friends in Trenton understood well. He convinced them that the railroad was necessary for the local glass and iron industries to remain competitive. As for Pitney’s plans to build a railroad to a sand patch of only seven cabins, and the expense of laying rail all the way to Absecon Island, that would be the risk of the investors.

There were no objections from the Camden-Amboy Railroad, which probably didn’t take any of it seriously. In the end, the legislators yielded to the force of Richards’ personality and the common belief that nothing would ever come of Pitney’s schemes. Thus, what had been the Railroad to Nowhere in 1851 became the newly chartered Camden-Atlantic Railroad the following year.

With the granting of a railroad charter Pitney’s dream took one giant step forward. Richards and Pitney then proceeded to secure investors; nearly all were in the iron and glass industries or large landowners. Pitney could dream the big dream, but he wasn’t much help in raising money. Of the initial 1,477 shares of stock issued, Pitney purchased 20 and made a sale of 100 shares to his friend Enoch Doughty of Absecon. Samuel Richards secured the remainder of the investors, with a majority of the stock controlled by his family. For most of the investors, the success of Pitney’s beach village was irrelevant. Their factories and landholdings were in Camden and western Atlantic Counties, 30 to 50 miles from the seashore. As long as the railroad reached their properties, they cared little whether the train made it to the seacoast and even less what became of Absecon Island.

Samuel Richards later admitted that he first saw Absecon Island in June 1852, only a week before the organization of the railroad, and three full months after the legislature had granted the charter. “We drove down in a carriage to Absecon Village, then went over in a boat to the beach. We landed on the usual landing place on the thoroughfare, not very far from the Leeds’ farm.”

Richards was overwhelmed by all of the sand. Years later he confessed, “In my mind … it was the most horrible place to make the termination of a railroad I had ever seen.” Several other investors made the visit with Richards and they nearly scuttled the project. “The island appeared uninviting to their eyes, and its sterile sand heaps, naked in their desolation, gave it a weird, wild look, a veritable desert. …”

The investors were skeptical that this place could ever be turned into a health resort and felt that “to build a railroad to such a wild spot would be a reckless piece of adventure.” Richards’ friends doubted that a rail line could be installed across the meadows leading to the bay side of the island. Richards reminded them that the main reason for the railroad was to link their factories and land to the growing population centers of Camden and Philadelphia and assured them that Pitney’s health resort was secondary.

The money raised by the new Camden-Atlantic Railroad was used for more than acquiring a right-of-way and laying track. Richards and Pitney set about purchasing all the land they could on Absecon Island. Only 10 miles in length and little more than a mile at its widest, the island offered tempting possibilities for monopolization. For the small sums involved, Richards couldn’t resist speculating that real estate values on Absecon Island might increase after the rail line was completed. Because Jonathan Pitney had the trust of the locals, title to the property was taken in his name and later transferred to the railroad company.

The Camden-Atlantic Railroad gobbled up real estate so aggressively that the state legislature adopted a law prohibiting it from buying any more land, but that didn’t stop Richards and Pitney. They promptly formed the Camden-Atlantic Land Company and continued to purchase property. With Jeremiah Leeds gone and his heirs no longer interested in farming, Richards and Pitney were able to acquire most of Absecon Island. All the real estate needed to satisfy the investors was acquired in less than two years, with the Leeds family selling the bulk of their holdings by 1854. Together, the Railroad and Land Companies bought nearly 1,000 acres at prices between $5 and $10 per acre.

While Pitney negotiated land purchases, Richards saw to the construction of the railroad. The original choice as contractor was Peter O’Reilly. Ground was broken in September 1852 but after several months of floundering, it was obvious O’Reilly wasn’t up to the task. Richards decided O’Reilly had to go. He was replaced by Richard Osborne, who had previously managed the Richmond and Danville Railroad. British born and educated, Osborne was a civil engineer trained in Chicago, the boomtown of the 19th century. Osborne was formidable looking, distinguished by his sideburns and mustache, both of which grew down below his chin. He was working in Philadelphia when approached by Samuel Richards to serve as consulting engineer to the Railroad and Land Companies in the development of their bathing village. Osborne knew an opportunity when he saw one and was excited at being on the ground floor of Richards’ venture. He hoped that the raw landscape of Pitney’s island might allow him to carve out a fortune.

Richard Osborne’s first task was to select a right-of-way for the construction of the rail line. It was an uncomplicated matter. He set the course for the tracks in a straight line from Cooper’s Ferry in Camden to the middle of Absecon Island. Osborne and his survey crew mapped the train route directly through the heart of South Jersey’s pine forest. Stagecoach roads and existing rights-of-way used by wagons or horsemen were ignored. The tracks would go around nothing.