Revolutionary Tales - Riley Whitlock

Every summer since she can remember, Riley Whitlock and her family have made the trek two hours downstate from Westfield, New Jersey, to Wildwood Beach on the state's south shore. It's her home away from home.

Her favorite beach game growing up was to sprint down the sand toward the water as she and her sister dared the retreating Atlantic Ocean waves to catch them.

"[My dad] said we looked like little sandpipers on the beach," said Whitlock, now a first-year student at the George Washington University.

But today, the Whitlock sisters, as well as the sandpipers, don't have much room to run. New Jersey, not the only coastal state to hold this designation, has experienced significant shoreline retreat.

Since 1986, around the time Whitlock's mother first started going to Wildwood Beach, the area has lost up to 1,000 miles of shoreline due to chronic erosion-caused by natural forces like storms, sea-level rise and wave action, as well as human impacts such as altering natural sand dunes.

The change was particularly noticeable to Whitlock when she and her family returned for Wildwood's Oktoberfest a few falls ago. She noted the shore was just 20 feet from the seawall and dunes, thus realizing the severity of the situation.

Namely, would this 40-year family tradition have an eventual end because, well, there would be no setting for it any longer?