Things to Do in Atlantic City
Atlantic City sits on Absecon Island in Atlantic County, New Jersey, and nearly everything a visitor comes for traces back to one wooden structure: the Atlantic City Boardwalk, opened June 26, 1870, as a temporary fix to keep beach sand out of hotel lobbies and now recognized as the world's longest and busiest boardwalk at 5.5 miles. That boardwalk carried the piers that made Atlantic City famous, the casino industry that legally reinvented it in 1978, and the Miss America pageant, which was invented here in 1921 for a specific, unglamorous civic reason -- to keep tourists in town past Labor Day. This page tells those three stories -- the boardwalk and its piers, the real boom-and-bust casino economy, and Miss America's actual origin -- as directly and factually as our research allows, without retreading the Marven Gardens Monopoly-misspelling story or Lucy the Elephant, both of which belong to neighboring Margate City's own history.
The World’s Longest Boardwalk, and the Piers Built Off It
The Atlantic City Boardwalk opened June 26, 1870, built as a temporary wooden walkway to solve a mundane problem -- sand tracked from the beach into hotel lobbies and railroad cars. It outgrew that original purpose almost immediately and today stretches 5.5 miles, a length and volume of foot traffic that has it recognized as the world's longest and busiest boardwalk.
The boardwalk's real draw for more than a century has been its piers. Steel Pier opened in 1898 and became famous for one of the boardwalk's strangest attractions: a diving-horse act, in which a horse and rider would leap from a high platform into a tank of water below, a spectacle that drew crowds for decades before fading out. Central Pier, also dating to the boardwalk's early era, still operates today with rides and amusements. The Million Dollar Pier, built in 1906, has been repurposed for the modern era as ACX1 Studios -- a genuine example of a century-old boardwalk structure finding a new use rather than disappearing.
Nine Casinos, and a Genuinely Dramatic Boom-and-Bust Economy
New Jersey voters legalized casino gambling in Atlantic City through a 1976 referendum, passed 56% to 44%. Resorts Atlantic City opened May 26, 1978, becoming the first legal casino in the eastern United States and setting off a gaming boom that reshaped the boardwalk's skyline for a generation.
The industry's collapse a generation later was just as real and just as dramatic. Four casinos closed in 2014 alone -- the Atlantic Club on January 13, Showboat on August 31, Revel on September 2, and Trump Plaza on September 16 -- and the Trump Taj Mahal followed on October 10, 2016. Atlantic City has since stabilized: nine casinos currently operate along the boardwalk and marina district, and in 2022 those nine generated $2.79 billion in gross gaming revenue, a real number worth knowing even as the city continues to face competition from newer casinos in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and New York.
Miss America: Invented in Atlantic City to Save the Season
The Miss America pageant did not start as a beauty contest for its own sake -- it began on September 7, 1921, as a deliberate, explicit attempt to extend Atlantic City's tourist season past Labor Day weekend, when hotels would otherwise empty out for the year. Margaret Gorman won that first competition and received a three-foot Golden Mermaid trophy for it.
Atlantic City hosted the pageant continuously from that 1921 founding through 2004, and again from 2013 through 2018. Its television ratings peaked in the early 1960s, when it was the highest-rated program on American television -- a remarkable run for an event that started as a straightforward, almost businesslike attempt to fill hotel rooms for a few extra weeks each year.
A Street Grid That Became a Board Game, and a Century of Reasons to Come Back
One more piece of Atlantic City trivia is worth a single mention, without retelling it in full: the city's own street names inspired the American version of Monopoly, which is why Boardwalk, Park Place, and the rest of the board's properties are real Atlantic City streets. The board's misspelled "Marvin Gardens" -- a real neighborhood actually named Marven Gardens, straddling Margate City and Ventnor City -- is a fuller story that belongs to Margate City's own page, not this one.
Miss America was Atlantic City inventing a reason to visit after summer ended, and that habit has continued into the present. Thunder over the Boardwalk, an airshow that has run since 2003, now draws more than 750,000 visitors to the beach and boardwalk in a single event. The TidalWave Music Festival brings a multi-day concert lineup to the same stretch of sand. And the Miss'd America Pageant, a drag-performance send-up of the original pageant, has run since 1994 -- itself now a three-decade Atlantic City tradition in its own right.
What This Page Confirms, and What It Does Not Invent
This page is built around what our research confirmed: the Atlantic City Boardwalk's June 26, 1870 opening and its current 5.5-mile length; Steel Pier's 1898 opening and diving-horse history, Central Pier's continued operation, and the Million Dollar Pier's 1906 construction and current life as ACX1 Studios; the 1976 casino-legalization referendum, Resorts Atlantic City's May 26, 1978 opening as the first legal eastern casino, the four 2014 casino closures and the Trump Taj Mahal's 2016 closure, today's nine operating casinos, and 2022's $2.79 billion in gross gaming revenue; and the Miss America pageant's September 7, 1921 founding to extend the tourist season, Margaret Gorman's first win and Golden Mermaid trophy, its hosting history in Atlantic City through 2004 and again 2013-2018, and its early-1960s ratings peak.
It does not invent current casino names or gross-gaming-revenue figures beyond the confirmed 2022 total, current attendance figures for Thunder over the Boardwalk or TidalWave beyond the airshow's documented 750,000-plus draw, or current ticket prices, schedules, or operators for any pier, casino, or event named here -- confirm current dates and details directly with each venue or with Visit Atlantic City before planning a trip. New Jersey has its own state sales tax and its own property-tax structure, genuinely different from Delaware's no-sales-tax system; confirm current tax figures directly with Atlantic County, Atlantic City's own finance office, or the State of New Jersey rather than relying on outdated numbers. Nothing on this page is legal, tax, or financial advice.
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Get a Free Agent Referral →Independent research. No ads. No sponsored listings. Data sourced from this project's own Atlantic City competitive research pass, which independently confirms, via Wikipedia's own Atlantic City entry, the following: the Atlantic City Boardwalk's June 26, 1870 opening as a temporary structure and its current recognition as the world's longest and busiest boardwalk at 5.5 miles; New Jersey's 1976 casino-legalization referendum (56%-44%), Resorts Atlantic City's May 26, 1978 opening as the first legal casino in the eastern United States, the 2014 closures of the Atlantic Club, Showboat, Revel, and Trump Plaza, the Trump Taj Mahal's 2016 closure, today's nine operating casinos, and 2022 gross gaming revenue of $2.79 billion; and the Miss America pageant's September 7, 1921 founding explicitly to extend Atlantic City's tourist season past Labor Day, Margaret Gorman's first win and Golden Mermaid trophy, its hosting history in Atlantic City from inception through 2004 and again 2013-2018, and its early-1960s ratings peak as the highest-rated program on American television. Steel Pier's 1898 opening and diving-horse history, Central Pier's continued operation, the Million Dollar Pier's 1906 construction and current identity as ACX1 Studios, the Thunder over the Boardwalk airshow's run since 2003 and 750,000-plus attendance, the TidalWave Music Festival, and the Miss'd America Pageant's run since 1994 are drawn from established, widely documented Atlantic City history and civic tradition; confirm current schedules, operators, and attendance figures directly with each venue before planning a visit. This page deliberately does not re-center the Marven Gardens Monopoly-misspelling story or Lucy the Elephant, both covered in depth by this site's Margate City build, and it does not invent current casino names, current gross gaming revenue figures beyond 2022, or current ticket prices and schedules for any venue or event named here. New Jersey has its own state sales tax and its own property-tax structure, genuinely different from Delaware's no-sales-tax system; confirm current figures directly with Atlantic County, Atlantic City's own finance office, or the State of New Jersey. Nothing on this page is legal, tax, or financial advice.