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22 Jun 2018
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About Virginia Beach

The very first blog post was a quick introduction to Sandbridge but now it's time to learn how it all started. Sandbridge didn't start as the beach community it is today. From the 1870s to the 1920s, more than 100 gunning clubs were said to have set up along the shores of Back Bay and Currituck Sound. It was Back Bay known for its fishing and hunting, not the beach which was the big draw in Sandbridge. That all changed as the 1950s were approaching and gunning clubs were becoming less prevalent.

The first house in Sandbridge was built in 1953 by James Kabler and his family. There's even a road today in Sandbridge named Kabler Rd. A handful of families followed suit after Kabler and built homes. One of the original Sandbridge residents, Adelaide Snyder said "Our lives down here were about our children. There were between 12 and 20 children, and we all went on the beach between 10 and 12 each morning. We'd come up for lunch at noon, then read or nap until time to go back to the beach between 3 and 5. When fathers came home form work, it was the adults' time on the beach." It was defintely a family atmosphere which is what residents of Sandbridge are trying to maintain to this day.