Tuckerton Seaport

S7 guest-9df2b 2026-07-06 03:11:03

# Tuckerton Seaport The Tuckerton Seaport is a working maritime village and museum located in Tuckerton, a borough situated on the Jersey Shore, within Ocean County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The 40-acre (160,000 m2) site, which opened in May 2000, features 17 historic and recreated buildings connected by a boardwalk, a maritime forest and wetlands nature trail. The seaport, which is a member of the Council of American Maritime Museums, celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2010. The site of the Tuckerton Seaport was built on a formerly-wooded site along Tuckerton Creek, which had long been slated for commercial development. In 1989, plans for a motel, campground, and marina were brought to the planning board. July 1993, Barnegat Bay Decoy and Baymen's Museum opened adjacent to Stanley "Tip" Seaman Park, on a site currently occupied by tennis courts. The Baymen's museum officially announced a revised plan for commercial development on the Tuckerton Creek site, an 11-building village dubbed the "Tuckerton Seaport". However, as planning and development were underway, the plan for the site grew larger than originally proposed. Developed by the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, the $11.3 million Tuckerton Seaport project officially opened on May 13, 2000, to a crowd of over a thousand, dedicated by then-governor Christine Todd Whitman and the widow of Jacques Cousteau, among others. However, the village held an unofficial "soft opening" a week earlier. In preparation for the new traffic created by the museum, the intersection of Route 9 and Great Bay Boulevard was redesigned, eliminating the "fork in the road" and the addition of Tuckerton's second traffic light. The nautical-style lampposts seen throughout the seaport were originally located at the former Trump Marina in Atlantic City, but were dismantled and then shipped to Tuckerton to make way for the Atlantic City–Brigantine Connector. The special edition New Jersey license plate known as "Baymen's Heritage" features an image of the Tucker's Island Lighthouse along with a Canada goose decoy. The plates were introduced in 1998 to benefit the construction of the Tuckerton Seaport; the plates are still available for purchase. In 2010, the New Jersey Surf Museum opened at the seaport, which documents the culture of surfing in New Jersey as well as displaying of over 300 boards. It is the only surfing museum in the state.