Coney Island for Quiet People - 1850

Coney Island a "lesser resort" for "quiet people"? Well, I'll be.

Summer Rambles.

There was an unusual earth of Summer Travel last season, caused by the prevalence of the dreadful epidemic in nearly all our cities and many villages, which kept thousands at home who would otherwise have been roaming. There will doubtless be some revisitings of that scourge the present season--indeed, we hear of them already in a few localities, mostly Southern ; but the summer is now so far advanced, that we think all apprehension of a general and deselating (?) return of the Cholera in 1850 may be dismissed. We may reasonably anticipate, therefore, that the pleasure travel of the season will exceed the usual average by so much, at least, as that of 1849 fell short of it.

But what channels will it follow ? and in what eddies shall the travelers unbend and disport themselves ? …The minor watering-places--SHARON SPRINGS, NEW-LEBANON, BEDFORD, Pa., the WHITE SULPHUR, &c. &c. will each have its circle of visitors, with the lesser resorts for sea-air and bathing,--LONG BRANCH, CONEY ISLAND, ROCKAWAY, STONINGTON, NAHANT, (???). For quiet people, who loathe display and crowds, and whom a moderate share of social relaxation satisfies, we deem some of this class superior to the more popular and pretending. We never yet found sea-bathing superior to Rockaway, though the place is difficult of access (some like it the better for that) and its circle of entertainments is limited. And where can finer sea-air be inhaled than that which sweeps over the civilized end of Coney Island?...


--New York Daily Tribune, Thursday, June 20, 1850/