24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Cape May Point, NJ

Cape May Point is a borough at the very tip of the Cape May Peninsula in Cape May County, where the Atlantic Ocean meets Delaware Bay at the southern end of New Jersey.

The community began in 1875 as Sea Grove, a Presbyterian retreat founded by Alexander Whilldin as 'a moral and religious home'; the spot had earlier been known as Stites Beach before the name was changed to Seagrove in 1876.

Cape May Point was incorporated as a borough on April 19, 1878, from portions of Lower Township, surrendered its independence back to Lower Township in 1896, and then re-emerged as a separate municipality in 1908.

The borough covers only 0.31 square miles, and its name traces to Cape May, named for the 17th-century Dutch captain Cornelius Jacobsen May, who explored and charted the area between 1611 and 1614.

The 2020 census counted 305 year-round residents in Cape May Point, up from 291 in 2010, but the summer population can swell to about 4,500.

Cape May Point is a dry town where the sale of alcohol is prohibited, one of only three remaining dry municipalities in Cape May County alongside Ocean City and Wildwood Crest.

Lake Lily, a 16-acre freshwater lake, covers much of the northeastern section of the borough.

The Cape May Lighthouse technically stands just over the borough line in Lower Township — the present tower, built in 1859, is the third on the site after towers of 1823 and 1847 — yet Cape May Point uses the lighthouse as the logo on its municipal vehicles.

The remains of the SS Atlantus, a World War I-era experimental concrete-hulled ship, lie off Sunset Beach just outside Cape May Point and form one of the Jersey Shore's best-known sights.

The borough is a renowned stopover for migratory birds, and in 2004 its only two businesses were the Cape May Bird Observatory's shop and the Cape May Point General Store.