Longport — Ten Numbered Streets Lost to the Sea, a Borough That Is Now 74.49% Water, and Seaview Harbor's Failed Fight to Leave Egg Harbor Township for Longport

A Real "Lost Neighborhood" Erosion Event, a Failed Secession Bid, and a Current Dune-Education Story

Longport's identity starts with a real, dated erosion event that no other Jersey Shore market on this site can claim in quite the same way. Confirmed via Wikipedia: between 1900 and 1916, storms eroded 180 acres comprising ten numbered streets on the southern end of the barrier island, significantly reshaping Longport's geography -- a documented historical loss of platted, numbered streets to the sea, not merely a narrowing beach. Longport sits on the southwest corner of Absecon Island, an 8.1-mile-long barrier island it shares with Margate City, Ventnor City, and Atlantic City, and today totals just 1.56 square miles -- only 0.40 square miles of land against 1.16 square miles of water, meaning the borough is roughly 74.49% water by area, among the highest water-to-land ratios of any market built on this site. The precise former boundaries or original names of those ten lost streets are not confirmed beyond Wikipedia's own "ten numbered streets" and "180 acres" description, and no specific street names or precise map of the loss is invented here.

Layered onto that history is a second, genuinely distinct story: a real, decade-long secession saga fully litigated up to the New Jersey Supreme Court. Confirmed via the Philadelphia Inquirer, Press of Atlantic City, and DownBeach's own extensive coverage: Seaview Harbor is a waterfront subdivision developed in the 1960s within Egg Harbor Township, comprising 92 homes with private docks plus a restaurant and marina with 300 boat slips, with a combined assessed value of roughly $100 million. Beginning around 2014, its property owners petitioned to secede from Egg Harbor Township and join Longport Borough instead, citing a documented, dramatic property-tax differential -- court evidence showed a $1 million home would face roughly $31,400 in annual taxes in Egg Harbor Township versus roughly $9,800 in Longport. Egg Harbor Township's Township Committee denied the petition in 2016; a trial judge ruled against Seaview Harbor in February 2020; the New Jersey Appellate Division affirmed that ruling in a 48-page opinion in December 2021, agreeing that deannexation would cause "the loss of social and economic diversity" and cost Egg Harbor Township roughly $2.3 million in annual tax revenue (a projected 5.9-cent tax-rate increase for remaining residents); the New Jersey Supreme Court denied further appeal shortly after, ending the litigation with Seaview Harbor remaining part of Egg Harbor Township.

This saga is a genuine mirror image, in reverse, of Strathmere's own secession story found elsewhere on this site -- but the two run in opposite directions and should not be conflated. Strathmere residents pursued their own 2010 dispute wanting OUT of their township for greater local control; Seaview Harbor residents, by contrast, spent roughly a decade fighting to get IN to Longport specifically because of its dramatically lower property taxes. Both disputes were real, both were fully litigated, and both were ultimately resolved against the petitioners -- but one was a push to leave, and the other was a push to join, and this page states that distinction honestly rather than treating the two as the same story told twice. Whether Seaview Harbor pursued any further legal or legislative avenue after the New Jersey Supreme Court's denial of further appeal is not confirmed this research pass, and no further pending action is stated here as fact.

Grounded underneath both the erosion history and the secession saga is a real, current, small-scale civic story. Confirmed via DownBeach's own July 2025 coverage: Longport installed seven educational signs along beach crossovers after officials observed beachgoers -- including a July 4th Facebook post showing people standing on protective dunes to watch fireworks -- demonstrating limited public understanding of dune importance. Each sign, one of four designs, includes a QR code linking to a dedicated website, "Our Dunes." Zoning Officer Bruce Funk was quoted: "People don't understand how important the dunes are. The diversity of wildlife there is amazing," and he called the dunes "more than just a pile of sand." The $5,000 initiative was funded through a CAFRA Trust Fund donation -- a coastal-development-approval requirement -- with signs costing roughly $700 each to install. This is a small, honest, current civic story, genuinely different in scale and tone from North Wildwood's lawsuit or Strathmere's condemned Beach Patrol building elsewhere on this site, but real and current nonetheless.

On current figures, the honest approach is to hedge rather than guess. Longport is a borough in Atlantic County, New Jersey; the 2020 census counted 893 residents, down 0.2% from 895 in 2010, itself down 15.1% from 1,054 in 2000; the population was predominantly white (98.88% in 2010), with a median age of 58.2 and notably low poverty rates. James Long purchased property in the area in 1857; M. Simpson McCullough acquired and developed the area in 1882, naming it "Longport" in his honor; the borough incorporated March 7, 1898, carved from Egg Harbor Township. Longport ranked 22nd among New Jersey's most expensive ZIP codes in 2018, with a median home sale price of $767,500 in 2017, and its average property tax bill reached $10,872 in 2018, the highest in Atlantic County that year -- but these are dated 2017-2018 figures and should not be treated as current. No current (2026) permanent population figure beyond the 2020 census count, current median home price, active-listing count, or specific current rental rate is confirmed here. This is also this site's tenth New Jersey market, and New Jersey's tax structure remains genuinely different from the no-state-sales-tax framing used across every Delaware market on this site: New Jersey does levy a state sales tax, and Atlantic County and Borough of Longport property tax rates and assessment structures are their own separate matter. No current New Jersey sales-tax rate, current Longport or Egg Harbor Township property tax rate, or specific current assessment figure is stated here as fact; direct those questions to Atlantic County government, the Borough of Longport's own finance office, and the State of New Jersey. No current FEMA flood-zone designation for any specific parcel, no specific current restaurant or shop names, and no dated 2025-2026 storm damage or erosion event beyond the confirmed July 2025 dune-signage initiative is stated here as fact. This page is independent research, not legal, tax, insurance, or financial advice; confirm anything time-sensitive with the appropriate licensed professional or local government office before making a decision.