Thanks to the lifting of Prohibition in 1933, you can legally hoist a glass in any town in the Garden State. In some of those towns, however, you still can’t buy the alcohol to fill that glass—and you may not be able to hoist it in public.
Our pro-booze history is long: During Prohibition, New Jersey’s coastline formed part of the infamous Rum Line, along which bootleggers sold their wares, just beyond the limit of U.S. jurisdiction, to a fleet of local seamen. But our history of temperance is even longer, stretching back well over a century, when towns founded by religious denominations, or strongly influenced by them, prohibited the selling of alcoholic beverages. Those towns include Ocean City, Ocean Grove, Island Heights and Pitman, all founded as religious retreats for Methodists seeking summer relief from nearby cities in the late 19th century long before air conditioning. Similarly, Cape May Point began as Sea Grove, a Presbyterian religious community.
Those towns are among the 30 or so that remain dry today, in one form or another. Many forbid the selling of alcohol for consumption off premises, but allow it to be consumed in restaurants. One exception is Ocean City, where visitors who attempt to B their own B to a town eatery will be told, politely but sternly, that it can’t be enjoyed on the premises. Surprisingly, a number of dry towns, including Haddonfield, Shiloh and Upper Pittsgrove, are home to wineries, breweries and/or distilleries, since licenses to manufacture alcohol in New Jersey are issued by the state and not the municipality.
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Some of New Jersey’s dry laws veer toward the quirky. In Ocean Grove, for instance, you can consume alcohol on your porch, as long as you drink it out of a cup. (One resident confirmed knowledge of the law, but noted that it was widely ignored.) In Far Hills, the sale of alcohol is legal once a year, at the annual Race Meeting, a steeplechase event long famous for its boozy ambience (though rules enacted a decade ago, prohibit attendees from bringing their own liquor through the gate).
Still, the trend is definitely running wetter. In 2011, residents of Moorestown passed a referendum to allow the retail sale of alcohol (though it took more than a decade after that for Super Buy Rite, the town’s first liquor store, to open). In 2020, the Borough of Rutherford passed a similar referendum, allowing the sale of alcohol only until 11 pm. “I think residents felt comfortable voting for this because it provided more options to small business in a thoughtful manner,” says Mayor Frank Nunziato. “Voters understood that our licenses are issued with controls in place that would prevent the borough from becoming a bar town.”
Even thoughtful alcohol policies are likely to be a bridge too far for the steadfastly dry Ocean City. The town’s mayor, Jay Gillian, explains: “Generations have come to know and love Ocean City as America’s Greatest Family Resort,” he says. “It’s been a dry town since its founding in 1879, and there’s no realistic chance of that ever changing.”
Leslie Garisto Pfaff, a frequent contributor to New Jersey Monthly, is happy to B her own B, in towns both dry and wet.
[RELATED: Will New Jersey Ever Loosen Its Liquor Laws?]
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