Ocean View (Norfolk)

It has several miles of shoreline on the Chesapeake Bay to the north, starting with Willoughby Spit to the west and the Joint Expeditionary Base -- Little Creek in the independent city of Virginia Beach on the east.

A small portion of East Ocean View adjacent to the Little Creek Amphibious Base was added in a land-swap with the city of Virginia Beach in 1988.

[citation needed] The area which became known as Ocean View City was originally a 360-acre (1.5 km2) tract called the Magagnos Plantation which had extensive frontage on the Chesapeake Bay east of Willoughby Spit and west of Little Creek.

Under the leadership of Walter H. Taylor, about 30 years later, a narrow gauge steam passenger railroad service was established between Norfolk and Ocean View, a 9-mile long line[1] crossing what was then known as Tanner's Creek (later renamed Lafayette River).

[3] With the advent of additional electric streetcars in the late 19th century, an amusement park was developed at the end-of-the-line and a boardwalk was built along the adjacent beach area.

However, it and other newer highways encouraged visitors to continue on to the Virginia Beach resort area on the Atlantic Ocean, a small city which boomed after merging with Princess Anne County in 1963.

After several years of decline in the 1970s, during which Busch Gardens in Williamsburg opened less than an hour's drive away, Ocean View Amusement Park was closed after Labor Day, 1978 and was torn down soon after the filming of a 1979 made-for-TV movie called The Death of Ocean View Park, which starred Mike Connors of Mannix fame, Barry Newman, and Academy Award winner Martin Landau.

Also, the 1977 movie Rollercoaster (with Timothy Bottoms), George Segal, Henry Fonda, and Richard Widmark, features "The Rocket", as well as other shots of the park in the opening sequences.

[8] In 2003, a massive beach restoration project was completed by the city, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Virginia Port Authority, which involved a large-scale rebuilding of sand dunes, planting of vegetation, and the placement of 10 offshore breakwaters to slow erosion and protect the neighborhood from coastal storms.