1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Long Branch

LONG BRANCH, a city of Monmouth county, New Jersey, U.S.A., on the easternmost or “long” branch of the Shrewsbury river and on the Atlantic coast, about 30 m. S. of New York City. Pop. (1890) 7231; (1900) 8872, of whom 1431 were foreign-born and 987 were negroes; (1910 census) 13,298. It is served by the Pennsylvania, the Central of New Jersey, the New York & Long Branch, and electric railways, and by steamboats to New York. The carriage roads in the vicinity are unusually good. Long Branch is one of the oldest American watering-places. It is situated on a bluff which rises abruptly 20-35 ft. above the beach, and along the front of which bulkheads and jetties have been erected as a protection from the waves; along or near the edge of the bluff, Ocean Avenue, 60 ft. wide and about 5 m. long (from Seabright to Deal), commands delightful views of the ocean. A “bluff walk” runs above the water for 2 m. The city has one public park, Ocean Park (about 10 acres), and two privately owned parks, one of which is Pleasure Bay Park (25 acres), on the Shrewsbury river, where operas are given in the open air. The principal public institutions are the Monmouth Memorial Hospital and the Long Branch Circulating Library. In Long Branch the Monmouth County Horse Show is held annually in July. The southern part of Long Branch, known as Elberon, contains some beautiful summer residences—in one of its cottages General U. S. Grant spent his summers for many years, and in another, the Francklyn, President J. A. Garfield died in 1881. In 1909 a monument to Garfield was erected in Ocean Park. Adjoining Long Branch on the N. is the borough of Monmouth Beach (incorporated in 1906; population, 1910, 485). Before the War of Independence the site of Long Branch was owned by Colonel White, a British officer. It was confiscated as a result of the war, and late in the century its development as a watering-place began. Long Branch was chartered as a city in 1904.