By MaryAnn Spoto

I finally did it.

After years of passing it, fantasizing about what was on the other side, I finally climbed the Great Wall of Sea Bright.

It is an imposing structure, beginning near the entrance to Sandy Hook and extending 1½ miles south. After a stretch of open horizon, it picks up again. Every few feet, there are staircases rising up and over the 18-foot, boulder-and-cement formation. At first glance, they seem inviting, teasing passers-by to climb them and enter an unknown landscape. But then you see you’re not really welcome. Sign after sign screams at you: “No Trespassing!” “Private Property.” “Keep Out!” Like a bully who invites all the cool kids to his birthday party and tells you you’re not wanted there. Harsh.

Constructed in phases between 1914 and 1962, the Great Wall wasn’t built to keep people out. It was erected to keep the Atlantic Ocean from wiping out the homes on the narrow peninsula that is Sea Bright and Monmouth Beach, and to protect the rail lines that carried vacationers.

As quaint as the town is, Sea Bright recently was labeled by environmental groups as one of the worst offenders in terms of providing beach access to the public. Bay Head, Mantoloking, and Loveladies and North Beach on Long Beach Island are a few of the others criticized for restricting access.

Take Sea Bright. In a town with 3 miles of coastline, nearly two-thirds of it is not easy to get to. Understandably, borough officials take issue with that distinction. They say Sea Bright offers a big municipal beach, with plenty of free parking for beachgoers. They say they have a free surfing beach with more free parking and portable toilets. They say the public can get to the other side of the Great Wall courtesy of six public stairways.

I say phooey. I say it’s not as easy to get on the beach as they think. A year after the state settled a lawsuit with the borough and the beach clubs there over accessibility, I wanted to see if there was any improvement. With my towel and cooler in hand on a recent sunny Saturday, I put their claims to the test. I wanted to see why Sea Bright and the state feel it’s okay to have most people jammed on about a third of the coastline there while another third is lightly populated, and yet another third is as empty as a beach day in winter.

For all the times I’d driven through Sea Bright in the past, it wasn’t hard to figure out parking is the biggest obstacle to getting to the beach. On the way south on Route 36 near Sandy Hook, a big road sign — for the benefit of beachgoers shut out of the federally owned Gateway National Park on crowded days — announces “Additional public beaches 2 miles.’’

Wait. What about the public beach supposedly accessible by the public staircase over the Great Wall just a few hundred feet away? If Sandy Hook is full, it’s a good bet the municipal lot to which that state-sanctioned sign is sending me will be full, too. Forget side streets. What few side streets there are — especially in the northern part of the borough — are either too narrow, already taken up by homeowners or have parking prohibitions.

At the municipal lot, photographer Noah K. Murray and I met a woman standing in a parking space to save the spot for her husband. Arriving at the beach later than usual that day, they were forced to park on the street, which has a two-hour time limit, she explained.

“On the Fourth of July, if you’re not here by 9:30, forget it,’’ she said.

The parking problem goes back at least five decades, when the Central Railroad of New Jersey abandoned the rail line in Sea Bright. The homeowners got the land directly across Route 36 from their property lines after the state did not act on an offer to buy the 3½-mile strip from the railroad for $250,000 in 1950 for a potential road-widening project. Those contiguous parcels would be ideal for parking, but what property owner is going to give up that extra space that serves as gardens, private parking lots and even a bocce ball court?

A spacious parcel adjacent to the sea wall and across from the Fairbanks Motel has just become available for public parking — at a hefty $25 fee — near the public access stairway there.

That’s about what private entrepreneurs in the more touristy towns such as Point Pleasant charge on a holiday weekend.

Noah and I also decided to check out the free beach, across from the Anchorage Condominiums and just north of the Chapel and Sea Bright beach clubs. All of the 30 or so parking spaces had long been filled, yet cars were still cruising the narrow lot hoping to get lucky. No dice.

Note to self: Remember the location of the single portable toilet in that lot because you’re not going to see another bathroom after that. Another obstacle, environmentalists say.

The Great Wall, lack of parking and an inadequate number of rest rooms are some of the reasons enviros consider Sea Bright largely inaccessible. Another is the Beach Club Wall. Until that settlement with the state Department of Environmental Protection last year, five private beach clubs to the north of the municipal beach and two clubs to the south essentially closed off the public from nearly a mile of beaches. The settlement gave the public access to a strip of beach closest to the water in front of the clubs.

Walking north from the free surfing beach, we reached the Surfrider Beach Club. A sign at the border said — in no uncertain terms — we had to pay to go any farther.

We had our $8 wristbands. Still, the Sea Bright police officer stationed at the border jumped off his beach quad to check if I had paid. If he’d had the eagle eyes of a seasoned beach-badge checker, he clearly would have seen the purple band around my left wrist. He told us we basically had access to the lower quarter of the beach, while club members had the whole expanse. But what if I just wanted to take a stroll and didn’t want to sit? Why should I have to pay?

And even though the public now can sit near the beach clubs, the clubs’ restrooms are off-limits. Although the clubs’ parking lots were full, the crowd on the beach was noticeably thinner than the surfing and municipal beaches.

Continuing our trek, we passed two more beach clubs before we reached the Promised Land: the beach behind the Great Wall. Nirvana. There were dunes, high and deep, topped with grasses. The sand was ungroomed, dotted sporadically with rotted timber and other natural debris that has washed ashore. For about a half-mile, we saw only 16 people either sunbathing or surf-fishing. It was very reminiscent of the beaches of North Carolina’s Outer Banks after Labor Day.

After basking in the glory of our accomplishment, the challenge became finding our way off the beach. We saw platforms on the Great Wall in the distance, but which one was the public walkway? I hiked over a dune toward a plain wooden staircase I surmised might be the one. Wrong. At the bottom of the steps was a locked gate with its “No Trespassing” sign. I hiked back over the dune and we headed farther north. This next platform looked promising because of the trash cans flanking the entrance to the pathway. Back over the dunes and … bingo. Blue signs announce public access.

The breezes, how refreshing way up there. The views, how lovely. I felt as if I should have hoisted a flag commemorating my achievement. A bicyclist joined us and snapped a few pictures he said he would show his wife. Like me, he’d always wanted to climb the Great Wall, he said, but couldn’t find his way on until that day. Unlike me, he didn’t have to get a blister on his foot to do it.

MaryAnn Spoto is a reporter in The Star-Ledger's Statehouse Bureau: (609) 989-0267 or mspoto@starledger.com

LANDMARK N.J. COURT RULINGS ON BEACHES

1821

Arnold vs. Mundy — The first case to apply the public trust doctrine to a ruling. Declared the air, running water, the sea, "the fish and the wild beasts'' to be protected and held for the public.

1972

Neptune City vs. Avon-by-the-Sea — A municipality can't charge higher fees for nonresidents than for residents for its beaches. Also extended public trust rights to include recreation.

1978

Van Ness vs. borough of Deal — A municipality cannot set aside a part of its beach only for residents, even if it provides other public beaches.

1978

Hyland vs. borough of Allenhurst — A town cannot bar users of a public beach from municipal bathroom facilities adjacent to that beach

1984

Matthews vs. Bay Head Improvement Association — Quasi-public organizations can't restrict nonresidents from beaches.

1989

Slocum vs. borough of Belmar — A municipality cannot indiscriminately set beach fees for nonresidents. Established the criteria on which beach fees can be based.

2005

Raleigh Avenue Beach Association vs. Atlantis Beach Club Inc., et al. — The public has the right to access the beach in front of another person's shore home. Also said fees have to be priced reasonably for the public to get to the beach.

2010

City of Long Branch vs. Jui Yung Liu — Beaches created through sand replenishment projects are public property and do not become part of adjacent private lands.

— Compiled by MaryAnn Spoto