Fun Facts About Atlantic City

Atlantic City, New Jersey’s gambling mecca and one of the country’s most attractive places to place a wager, has had its ups and downs over the years – but nobody can deny the entertaining features of this location. With the many hotels and casinos dotting the seaboard, Atlantic City has developed quite a name for itself in US gambling history.

In honor of this cool city, I’ve put together some cool facts that I bet you never knew about Atlantic City:

• All the street names on the Monopoly board are found in Atlantic City, except for just one, Marvin Gardens, which can actually be found in Margate.
• Four and half times more steel was used to build the Taj Mahal Casino resort in AC than was used to build the Eiffel Tower in Paris!
• The first Miss America competition took place in Atlantic City in 1921 and the show was hosted there until 2005.
• The world’s largest pipe organ can be found in the Boardwalk Hall where the Miss America pageant was held.
• The first ‘twist’ dance was introduced by Chubby Checker at the Rainbow Club, Wildwood in 1960.
• Cape May was a popular swimming spot for residents in Victorian days.  However, the dress code was slightly different to what we can expect to see on beaches today.  For one, men and women swam at different hours. In addition, women wore dresses and shoes in the water while swimming, and men had their own strange attire – woolen short and shirts!
• Also in Victorian Days, the promenade in Atlantic City was a place to see and be seen. It was the area where respectable gentry would walk up and down the beach area, wearing their finest clothes and making an outing out of it.
• Wildwood’s shoreline is one of the only ones on the East Coast which is not diminishing. In fact, the beaches have the potential to expand by up to 100 feet in a single year!
• The TV series, Boardwalk Empire, which tells of gangsters in Atlantic City during Prohibition years, is actually filmed in Brooklyn, NY!