Cape May in New Jersey

Friday, 19 May 2023 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination:
Category/Kategorie: General
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Beach Avenue © Smallbones

Beach Avenue © Smallbones

Cape May (sometimes Cape May City) is a city located at the southern tip of Cape May Peninsula in Cape May County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Located where the Delaware Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean, it is one of the country’s oldest vacation resort destinations. The city, and all of Cape May County, is part of the Ocean City metropolitan statistical area, and is part of the PhiladelphiaWilmingtonCamden, PA-NJ-DEMD combined statistical area, also known as the Delaware Valley or Philadelphia metropolitan area. As of the 2020 United States census, the city’s year-round population was 2,768, a decrease of 839 (−23.3%) from the 2010 census count of 3,607, which in turn reflected a decline of 427 (−10.6%) from the 4,034 counted in the 2000 census. In the summer, Cape May’s population is expanded by as many as 40,000 to 50,000 visitors. The entire city of Cape May is designated the Cape May Historic District, a National Historic Landmark due to its concentration of Victorian architecture. Cape May was recognized as one of the top 10 beaches in the United States by the Travel Channel. It is part of the South Jersey region of the state.

Tourism is Cape May’s largest industry. The economy runs on the Washington Street Mall and includes shops, restaurants, lodgings, and tourist attractions including the Cape May boardwalk. Many historic hotels and B&Bs are located in Cape May, and commercial and sport fishing is a significant component of its economy. Cove Beach, located at Cape May southernmost tip, hosts hundreds of swimmers, sunbathers, surfers, and hikers daily during summer months. Cape May has been a popular resort for French Canadian tourists for several decades. Cape May County established a tourism office in Montreal, Quebec, but around 1995 it closed due to budget cuts. By 2010, the tourism office of Cape May County established a French language coupon booklet.

© panoramio.com - Frank Havenot/cc-by-sa-3.0 © flickr.com - kjarrett/cc-by-2.0 Washingon Mall © WhisperToMe © WhisperToMe Beach Avenue © Smallbones Dolphin watching © Smallbones
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© panoramio.com - Frank Havenot/cc-by-sa-3.0
Cape May has become known both for its Victorian gingerbread homes and its cultural offerings. The town hosts the Cape May Jazz Festival, the Cape May Music Festival and the Cape May, New Jersey Film Festival. Cape May Stage, an Equity theater founded in 1988, performs at the Robert Shackleton Playhouse on the corner of Bank and Lafayette Streets. East Lynne Theater Company, an Equity professional company specializing in American classics and world premieres, has its mainstage season from June–December and March, with school residencies throughout the year. Cape May is home to the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts & Humanities (MAC), established in 1970 by volunteers who succeeded in saving the 1879 Emlen Physick Estate from demolition. MAC offers a wide variety of tours, activities and events throughout the year for residents and visitors and operates three Cape May area historic sites—the 1879 Emlen Physick Estate, the Cape May Lighthouse and the World War II Lookout Tower. The Center for Community Arts (CCA) offers African American history tours of Cape May, arts programs for young people and is transforming the historic Franklin Street School, constructed in 1928 to house African-American students in a segregated school, into a Community Cultural Center. Cape May is the home of Cape May diamonds, which show up at Sunset Beach and other beaches in the area. These are in fact clear quartz pebbles that wash down from the Delaware River. They begin as prismatic quartz (including the color sub-varieties such as smoky quartz and amethyst) in the quartz veins alongside the Delaware River that get eroded out of the host rock and wash down 200 miles to the shore. Collecting Cape May diamonds is a popular pastime and many tourist shops sell them polished or even as faceted stones. The Cape May area is also world-famous for the observation of migrating birds, especially in the fall. With over 400 bird species having been recorded in this area by hundreds of local birders, Cape May is arguably the top bird-watching area in the entire Northeastern United States. The Cape May Warbler, a small songbird, takes it name from this location. The Cape May Bird Observatory is based nearby at Cape May Point. Cape May is also a destination for marine mammal watching. Several species of whales and dolphins can be seen in the waters of the Delaware Bay and Atlantic Ocean, many within 10 mi (16 km) of land, due to the confluence of fresh and saltwater that make for a nutrient rich area for marine life. Whale and dolphin watching cruises are a year-round attraction in Cape May, part of an ecotourism / agritourism industry that generated $450 million in revenue in the county, the most of any in the state. The Harriet Tubman Museum is in Cape May.

Cape May Fisherman’s Memorial, located at Baltimore and Missouri Avenues, was built in 1988. It features a circular plaza reminiscent of a giant compass, a granite statue of a mother and two small children looking out to Harbor Cove, and a granite monument listing the names of 75 local fishermen who died at sea. The names begin with Andrew Jeffers, who died in 1893, and include the six people who died in March 2009 with the sinking of the scalloping boat Lady Mary. The granite statue was designed by Heather Baird with Jerry Lynch. The memorial is maintained by the City of Cape May and administered by the Friends of the Cape May Fisherman’s Memorial. Visitors often leave a stone or seashell on the statue’s base in tribute to the fishermen.

Read more on VisitTheUSA.com – A unique gem among New Jersey’s beach towns, Wikivoyage Cape May and Wikipedia Cape May (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.




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