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By Scott M. Kozelnik: Lakewood’s location close to the Atlantic Ocean via the Metedeconk River sparked an early rise in enterprise in the vicinity. Some of the earliest businesses in Lakewood included a lumber mill, bog iron mining operations, and a blast iron furnace. During the latter half of the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century, Lakewood served as one of the premier winter resorts in the United States. The hotel industry in Lakewood was comprised of several elaborate architectural masterpieces, some of which were believed to be the grandest in the world at the time. Lakewood’s reputation as a “winter sanitarium” attracted the rich and famous from far and wide. Lakewood is an in-depth pictorial history of the metamorphosis from sleepy mill town, to spectacular resort and entertainment haven, to a bustling industrial center. Lakewood is a journey to places that have disappeared and an introduction to residents and visitors who have long gone. John D. Rockefeller, whose estate later became Ocean County Park, and George Jay Gould, who resided at a two-hundred-acre estate called Georgian Court, are just two of the prominent townspeople of Lakewood. The heroism of firefighters during the 1967 Laurel in the Pines fire, Jimmy Foxx and the 1934 Philadelphia Athletics in action at Princeton Avenue, and a look back at the early days of the annual Ocean County Fair give the reader an awe-inspiring view of Lakewood’s past.
