Cold Ice and Fresh Fish ~ A Wildwood Tradition

The moment a fish’s shimmering scales hit the deck of a fishing boat, the amazing race begins. That’s when nature’s clock starts counting down the minutes left before a fresh catch becomes, well...fishy. And a hundred years ago, Wildwood’s thriving fishing industry depended on the same two things commercial fishermen need today—a way to get the fish to market and lots and lots of ice.

Real estate developer, Henry H. Otten, knew this in 1906, when he brought a marine railway and an onsite icehouse to Holly Beach Harbor, the area that now bears his name. More than a decade before, Holly Beach founder, Phillip Baker, had arranged for the harbor to be carved out near Burk Avenue and what is now Park Boulevard. Early tourism brochures boasted of “a splendid inland waterway, three thousand feet long and a thousand feet wide.” But it was Otten’s endeavor that truly transformed the harbor into the hub of the island’s commercial fishing industry.

Before that, Mace’s Boat Landing near Moore’s Inlet had been the island’s commercial fishing center. That area had developed from a collection of fishing shacks erected around 1870 by the island’s first fulltime residents—many from Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

By the 1890s, the Hereford Fish Company was packing fish in ice there and sending it by rail to Philadelphia. The company reported packing and shipping 140,000 pounds of fish from the Anglesea harbor during the week of July 25, 1894.

But by the 1920’s, Anglesea’s commercial boats preferred pulling into Wildwood’s Ottens Harbor, at least in part, because of its deeper water. Records from the first six months of 1928, indicate that 100,000 barrels of fish, each weighing 200 pounds were packed and shipped from its docks.

Today, luxury condominiums line this once bustling commercial center. Tourists, eager for a day at sea, set out from here, and recreational fishermen in smaller boats dock near a handful of commercial scallop and clam boats that still unload their catch where generations of fishermen have landed before. And an new “Ice House” stands amid this exciting transformation.

Chuck and Jeanette Burns’ new Ice House Restaurant, at the former site of the historic Russo’s Restaurant, pays fitting tribute to Ottens Harbor’s deeproots as a fishing hub. The downstairs dining room with its modern nautical tones offers affordable, fresh-from-thesea dinners surrounded by vintage photos of the working harbor, while the open deck upstairs offers casual dining overlooking the harbor today.

It’s an impressive marriage of old and new, but unlike the old days, the fish don’t have to travel very far to end up on your plate.