Bay Head is a Borough in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2000 Census, the borough population was 1,238. Bay Head is situated on the Barnegat Peninsula, a long, narrow barrier peninsula that separates Barnegat Bay from the Atlantic Ocean. Together with Mantoloking to south, Bay Head is considered part of the Jersey Shore's "Gold Coast".
Bay Head was incorporated as a Borough by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on June 15, 1886, from portions of Brick Township, based on the results of a referendum held three days earlier.
The community was supposed to have been named "Bayhead," after the Bayhead Land Company that developed the area in the 1870s. A railroad sign posted in the 1880s labeled the station as "Bay Head," and the name stuck when the borough was incorporated in 1886.