55 Years of LBI Beach Badges

In the first ever book about New Jersey’s beach badges, Long Beach Island takes center stage with 55 Years of Long Beach Island Beach Badges 1967-2022. This colorful hardcover is a fascinating pictorial look at more than half a century of beach badges on LBI— starting with the very first badges ever issued.

The book presents every seasonal badge ever issued on LBI — plus a comprehensive sampling of daily, weekly, senior, holiday, and specialty badges. Presented within each of the Island’s towns chronologically — along with history, fun facts, rules, and price history for comparison (it’s all here!) — this is a rich gallery of summer icons familiar to generations of LBI beachgoers.

It’s a visual journey through beach time and summertime, exploring the history and evolution of beach badges on this eighteen-mile strip of sand. The Island’s six towns adopted beach fees in the late 1960s and '70s (along with much of the Jersey Shore) to fund lifeguards and beach maintenance. Today, beach badges are so accepted that most objections have vanished, and badges have become hot souvenirs.

This is a must-have book for anyone who has spent summers on LBI. 55 Years of Long Beach Island Beach Badges 1967-2022 is a celebration of the rich memories that beach badges represent. They’ve marked the passage of time — a child’s birth year, family vacations, summer jobs, and even relationships that have lasted a lifetime. Readers can stroll down the endless summer’s memory lane and reminisce. Who knew there was so much meaning and emotion in these little plastic tags of various colors and shapes!

Hardcover, 96 pages

Down the Shore Publishing