WATCH: 1960 Film Touts Seaside Heights To Tourists

People love to take a stroll down memory lane, recalling simpler days.

How often can you peek into the past, however, and see what it looked like through the eyes (and camera lenses) of the time?

A film, “Seaside Heights, Sun and Fun: The Town that Fun Built,” to promote tourism in Seaside Heights and made in 1960, shows a lot of sights that will be familiar to most people -- from the Ferris wheel and fishing pier that Sandy destroyed to motels, restaurants and other landmarks that have survived more than 50 years and through many changes.

The film was discovered in May 2008 by Peter J. Smith, director of the Seaside Heights Office of Public Relations. Smith had it converted to modern video format by Joe Verderosa of Greenrose Media and then posted it YouTube.

In the description, he writes that he had seen the film once before, ”when it was shown by Mr. Hugh J. Boyd, principal of his namesake school in Seaside Heights.”

Smith said he had looked for the video for five years in Borough Hall, and found it by accident when he had to reach high on a shelf to retrieve a box of eight radios. One of the radios was not in the box, so he grabbed a stepladder and look for the eighth radio.

“The radio was found on top of a reel of film, which turned out to be the long-lost Sun and Fun video. We like to think that the spirit of J. Stanley Tunney, who appears in this film, and is believed to occassionally make a paranormal visit to the Borough Hall, led us to this valuable piece of history,” he writes.

The film is nearly 17 minutes long, but there are a number of gems in it for any history buff. See how many places you recognize as still existing today, in 2015.