12. Atlantic City earned the nickname “The World’s Playground”
Atlantic City in the 1920s featured over 20 theaters, scores of nightclubs and speakeasies, more than a thousand hotels and rooming houses, and five ocean piers. During the summer months, the time of peak travel in America, nearly 100 trains arrived and departed daily. It was far from a family-oriented community, despite its wide, open beaches. The city’s political boss and the iron hand over Atlantic City’s rackets, Enoch Johnson, went by the nickname “Nucky”. Officially gambling, prostitution, and drinking alcohol were all illegal. Unofficially Atlantic City offered them all, in prodigious quantities, making it one of the most popular destinations on the East Coast. As Nucky reputedly said, “If the majority of the people didn’t want them they wouldn’t be profitable and they wouldn’t exist”.
For decades, Atlantic City thrived during the summer months and became a largely abandoned seaside town during the winter. In order to expand the tourist trade beyond the end of summer, in 1921 the city initiated the Inner City Bathing Beauty Contest. Eight newspapers across the country ran local contests, with winners appearing in Atlantic City. A sixteen-year-old girl from Washington DC won the first contest. The following year she appeared to defend her title, unsuccessfully. It was only after losing that she was referred to as the first Miss America. Atlantic City also claimed the first saltwater taffy, though the claim is disputed by several other east coast cities.
Check this out: Booze-Fueled Heyday of Atlantic City.