Things to Do in Cape May

Walking the Only Wholly Historic-Districted City in the U.S.

Cape May sits at the southern tip of the Cape May Peninsula in Cape May County, New Jersey -- a small city of 2,768 year-round residents at the 2020 census (down 23.3% from 3,607 in 2010) across just 2.90 square miles of land and water, though its summer population swells by an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 visitors. What makes it worth a dedicated day of sightseeing is that the entire city is designated the Cape May Historic District: listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and elevated to National Historic Landmark status in 1976, a designation Wikipedia describes as making Cape May "the only city in the U.S. to be wholly designated as a national historic district." The district contains more than 600 buildings, and a National Park Service architectural historian is quoted as calling the collection "one of the largest collections of late 19th century frame buildings left in the United States."

That is a genuinely singular claim among East Coast beach towns -- it is not one preserved street or one museum building, it is the whole city, block after block of Victorian-era architecture that visitors can simply walk through rather than view behind a rope.

Why the Streets Look Victorian: The 1878 Fire

The Victorian streetscape you walk through today has a dramatic origin story. In 1878, what the City of Cape May's own official history page calls "the most devastating fire of all" destroyed approximately 35 acres of the city; WHYY's own reporting more broadly describes the blaze as having leveled most of the town. Rather than force those two figures into one reconciled number, both are worth knowing as you tour the district -- what is certain is that the city rebuilt substantially afterward in Queen Anne, Gothic, and American bracketed architectural styles, which is precisely why Cape May looks the way it does today despite a settlement history stretching back centuries earlier.

That rebuilt Victorian character nearly did not survive into the present, either. A 1970s preservation movement -- funded in part by a 1963 Urban Renewal Grant of $3.5 million and culminating in the 1970 National Register listing and 1976 National Historic Landmark designation -- is directly credited with saving the district for the long term, rather than letting it be redeveloped away as happened in many other aging shore towns. Touring Cape May today means touring the direct result of that save.

Congress Hall: An 1816 Hotel at the Nation's Oldest Seaside Resort

Cape May's claim to being "the nation's oldest seaside resort" is not a recent marketing invention -- it traces to European settlement in the 1630s, when the first residents purchased land from the Kechemeche Lenape people and established fishing and whaling industries here. By 1766, the area then known as Cape Island was already developing "as a place where many resort for their health and pleasure," per the City of Cape May's own official history, and a coastal road built in 1796 helped establish it as a hamlet. Six boarding houses were operating by 1834, attracting wealthy visitors from major eastern cities.

Congress Hall Hotel opened in 1816 and still operates today -- a genuine, dated, still-standing anchor of that earliest resort era, and worth seeing simply for how long it has stood in the same spot. The New Atlantic hotel opened in 1842, accommodating 300 guests, and Henry Clay's two-week visit in 1847 is credited by the city's own history as marking "the beginning of its reign as the Queen of the Seaside Resorts." Construction began in 1852 on the Mount Vernon Hotel, intended to serve 3,500 patrons, but it burned in 1856 while still under construction -- a smaller, earlier precursor to the 1878 citywide fire. The 1863 completion of the railroad from Philadelphia then enabled what the city calls the "Cottage Era" of private summer-home construction, filling out the neighborhoods that still surround Congress Hall today.

The Cape May Canal: A WWII-Era Waterway

Beyond the Victorian district, Cape May also carries a genuine 20th-century military history that is easy to miss. The Cape May Canal was built in 1942, and per Wikipedia, numerous U.S. Navy installations were established in the area during World War II to help protect coastal shipping from submarine threats. The canal remains a real, functioning waterway today, connecting Cape May Harbor to Delaware Bay -- a working piece of WWII-era infrastructure rather than a preserved museum exhibit, and a different kind of landmark than the Victorian buildings that dominate the rest of the city.

What This Page Will Not Invent

This page is built around confirmed facts: Cape May's status as the only city in the U.S. wholly designated as a national historic district (National Historic Landmark since 1976, over 600 buildings), the dated 1878 fire and Victorian rebuild that shaped its streetscape, Congress Hall Hotel's 1816 opening and continued operation, Henry Clay's 1847 visit, and the Cape May Canal's 1942 construction during World War II. It does not state current museum hours, admission fees, tour prices, or the names of specific U.S. Navy installations from that era, because none of those details were confirmed during our research pass, and this project does not guess at them.

Before planning a visit around a specific tour, hour, or fee, confirm current details directly with the City of Cape May, Cape May County tourism resources, Congress Hall, or the individual sites themselves.