Cape May Point, NJ

Cape May Point sits at the southern tip of the Jersey Cape, where the Atlantic meets Delaware Bay and a borough of year-round homes swells with summer visitors. The community was first known as Stites Beach, then Seagrove, before taking the Cape May Point name and becoming a borough in the late nineteenth century. Its small population belies the amount of landscape around it: beaches, dunes, marsh, lighthouse country, and the migration routes followed by birds, monarchs, and dragonflies.

The Cape May Lighthouse and Cape May Point State Park sit nearby in Lower Township, while the borough's own calendar tracks lifeguard races, July Fourth traditions, monarch activity, environmental planning, water and sewer bills, and commissioner meetings. Sunset Beach and the wreck of the SS Atlantus add a slightly strange edge to the shore, and the Cape May Bird Observatory and South Cape May Meadows keep birding part of the local conversation. Cape May Point is a shore borough with two seasons in its bones: summer beach days and the spring-and-fall passage of birds across the bay.