Highlands has been remembered in pieces. We're putting them somewhere.

A community archive built with the families who kept it — every image credited, every claim cited. Why we're doing this

A sepia photograph ca. 1892 of the Great Switchback R.R. loading tower at Highland Beach from a second angle — seven passengers on the platform under the GREAT SWITCHBACK R.R. signboard, the large ticket board reading THE FINEST SPORT OF EARTH 3¢ ROUND TRIP, two men and barrels at foreground left A colorized photograph of the Great Switchback R.R. at Highland Beach ca. 1892 — the gravity-railroad loading tower with red-lettered signs reading GREAT SWITCHBACK R.R. THE FINEST SPORT OF EARTH 3¢, the wooden coaster trestle behind, two men and barrels in the foreground Original Restored
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The Great Switchback R.R. at Highland Beach · ca. 1892 · Sandlass Family Collection · via ATH archive See it in the archive   Read its chapter
The chapters
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1920–1933 · Prohibition and the rum fleet

Rum Row

The bootleg capital of the East — and the town that built the boats.

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A Landsat satellite view of Sandy Hook and the Navesink Highlands — the peninsula from tip to ridge, the river mouths betweenDeep time

The Land Itself

A stranded sea floor, and a new one being built beside it.

Enter An 18th-century engraved coastal profile of the Sandy Hook lighthouse seen from the sea, the octagonal tower over a low spit1764–1783

The Light and the War

The oldest operating lighthouse in America, and the town of refugees that grew at its feet.

Enter A sepia photograph, ca. 1892, of the Great Switchback R.R. loading tower at Highland Beach, passengers on the platform1881–1963

Highland Beach

The sea never beat this family. New Jersey did.

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All fifteen chapters
Four hundred years, in order

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Title card for the filmed conversation — "Coastal Resilience · A Conversation with Caleb" over a sunset bayshore, surf running in and the Manhattan skyline low on the horizon.

From the oral history program

Caleb Stratton

How a shore town prepares for the next storm. A conversation with Caleb Stratton on coastal resilience, recorded before a nor'easter met a king tide.

Watch the full interview

Families of the Highlands

Find your name in the archive
400Years covered
15Chapters
116Items in the archive
21Contributors, credited by name

Most of this town's history is in somebody's basement.

A photo album on a closet shelf. A menu from a restaurant that burned down. An hour of your grandfather talking about the fleet. If you have something, we want to see it — we scan it, and credit you by name on every image.

Bring something in Sit for an interview