The Building of the Atlantic City Boardwalk

As hotels and boardinghouses (rented out rooms in people's houses or giant no-frills hotels) sprung up in Atlantic City, the owners claimed about people trudging sand through their lobbies and rooms. Imagine having a carpet accumulate sand and not having a vacuum cleaner! Of course this has been a problem for full-time residents, but they would have incentive to brush the sand off outside, so as to not have to deal with sand inside later on. Further, train operators had the same problem of customers dragging sand into the rail cars.

The solution was to build a boardwalk, where people could walk on after the beach and the sand could fall off naturally. More importantly, a boardwalk would actually prevent visitors from walking on the beach, since people generally prefer being sand-free.