Holgate

The southern tip of Long Beach Island is federal wilderness. The Holgate Unit of the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge is about 3 miles long and covers more than 400 acres. It has been part of the refuge since 1960, and Congress designated it wilderness in 1975. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service closes it to all activities during the bird nesting season, when federally threatened piping plovers breed there. The U.S. Geological Survey says the peninsula has extended and migrated inland since 1970.

Joseph Horner opened a boarding house at the south end in 1815, the first resort on the main part of LBI according to the Historic American Buildings Survey. The survey says the resort was later known as the Long Beach House, where Captain Thomas Bond kept a government house of refuge for shipwreck victims. The Bonds life-saving station house built in 1887-1888 is still standing, in private ownership. Tucker's Island once lay south across Beach Haven Inlet, and NOAA says its lighthouse fell into the sea in 1927. When Hurricane Sandy made landfall near Brigantine on October 29, 2012, water at the Little Egg Inlet tide gauge peaked 2 meters above normal high tide.