Preserving the Story of Harvey Cedars, One Tide at a Time

Long before it was a summer destination, an early land deed from 1751 described this stretch of the island as “a hammock and clump of cedars called Harvest Quarters.” Repeated over generations, “harvest cedars” wore down to “harves,” and eventually to the “Harvey Cedars” we know today — not, as local legend once held, a nod to a settler named Harvey.

Whaling crews watched these shores as early as the mid-1600s, scanning for migrating “right” whales from a 30-foot lookout tower nicknamed the “owl's tree,” until overhunting ended the industry in the 1830s. The borough was formally incorporated on December 11, 1894 — under the name High Point, until the U.S. Postal Service asked the town to adopt “Harvey Cedars” in the early 1930s to stop mail mix-ups with a New Jersey township of the same name. The community has weathered, and rebuilt after, historic storms ever since, including the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 and the “Storm of the Century” in March 1962.

The Harvey Cedars Historical Society was formed to make sure these stories, and the people who lived them, are never forgotten.