Visiting the Wildwoods Vietnam Memorial Wall

The Wildwoods Vietnam Memorial Wall is located right across the street from the Wildwoods Convention Center in New Jersey. If you're unfamiliar with the area, you'll find it located in Columbus Park at 4500 Ocean Avenue, between Burk and Montgomery Avenues. If you're looking for parking, you can find that in the nearby Convention Center parking lot.

Visiting the memorial wall is 100% free and is a really humbling experience. The Vietnam Memorial Wall is 240 feet long and made out of 74 black granite panels. The wall contains the names of 58,913 people that were killed during the Vietnam War. It's basically a replica of the one in Washington D. C. and was dedicated in 2010 at an on-site ceremony.

On the day that we visited...we walked down the boardwalk to the Convention Center and then simply crossed the street to the memorial. The weather was absolutely perfect with mild temperatures, sunshine and blue skies. It was the perfect day to visit!

We took our time reading off a lot of the names of the brave men and women who lost their lives during the Vietnam War fighting for our country. It's a really humbling experience to see over 58,000 names engraved on that wall. There is some information on-site that you can read to learn more and if you want to sit down and just reflect on it all, you'll find some park benches that you can use for that.

Since it's located in Columbus Park you'll also find a memorial to Christopher Columbus that stands in front of the memorial wall. The memorial to Christopher Columbus was dedicated by the local Sons of Italy and honors his life.

There is a small area on the property that is dedicated to the men and women who lost their lives during the Korean War too. It states a year of 1950 through 1953 and has some smaller American flags and memorial wreaths around it. It doesn't contain any names or really any other specific information. I guess it's just a reminder about all of those who lost their lives during the war in Korea.

We spent about 40 minutes walking around the Wildwoods Vietnam Memorial Wall reading a lot of the names and visiting the on-site memorials. It was a great reminder that we all need to remember our veterans (past, presence and future) and give them all the respect that they deserve. Like I initially stated, it was a real humbling experience!