Cape May’s European story began not with Victorian hotels, presidents or tourists complaining about parking, but with whales.

On a hot Cape May afternoon, five ice cream scoops were placed in pale green melamine bowls atop the stone wall of one of the Washington Street Mall’s planted gardens and introduced to their future.

Much of what is now meadow, wetland and dune once formed the Borough of South Cape May, a separate municipality with its own mayor, council and clerk, rather than a neighborhood governed by the City of Cape May.

Because It’s Okay To Leave Cape May For One Day

The American lobster’s natural range stretches from Labrador to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The crustaceans are most abundant from Maine through New Jersey, and they occur offshore all the way down the Mid-Atlantic. So why is this not storied lobster country?

Officially known as Fire Control Tower No. 23, it has been standing guard near Sunset Beach since 1942. These days, it watches over beachgoers and sunsets.

What You Should Be Seeing And Doing In Cape May This Summer

This guide is for the people who plan their morning around the tide, the parking, and the first sip.

Long before Instagram posts or packed summer crowds, the heart of Cape May’s downtown was a regular street with cars rolling through, storefronts struggling, and merchants quietly wondering how to revive the city’s soul.

Before Cape May became famous for its Victorian cottages, it was famous for its hotels. Enormous hotels. Hotels with piazzas running the length of a city block. Hotels that could seat hundreds for dinner at one time.

Gulls get a bad rap. In Shore towns, they’ve been categorized as Public Enemy Number One. Ocean City has gone so far as to put trained falcons and hawks on boardwalk patrol, the avian equivalent of hiring bouncers to protect tourists and their fries.

So why does Cape May County work for grapes at all? Because, by some stroke of meteorological good manners, the county has a set of conditions grapes actually like.

Don’t Be Shady... How To Be A Better Beach Neighbor

How ‘SS Atlantus’ Became An Accidental Tourist Attraction

Exit Zero Jazz Festival has now become such a Cape May fixture that it feels as if it has always been here, like the lighthouse, the Lobster House, and people arguing over whether the beach tags are still in the glove compartment.

In a town known for verandas, Victorian trim and folks arguing over where to get the best crab cakes, there sits one of the most important military gateways in America.

The competitors were: Rusty Nail, Ugly Mug, Lucky Bones and the Mad Batter.

Cape May likes the idea of bicycles. It likes the romance of them — the notion of families pedaling around in the salt-sprayed air, children laughing in baskets, grown men rediscovering their youth in a straw hat and a faded beach patrol T-shirt.

Oysters are back in a big way in Cape May County.

The Chalfonte celebrates its 150th birthday this year and if you want to tell its story correctly, you have to begin not with wicker furniture or fried chicken or the agreeable creak of old floorboards, but with Henry Sawyer.