Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Cape May, NJ

Cape May is the southernmost municipality in New Jersey, sitting at the southern tip of the Cape May Peninsula where Delaware Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean.

The city is named for the Dutch captain Cornelius Jacobsen Mey, who charted this coast between 1611 and 1614.

The area was originally inhabited by the Kechemeche, a subgroup of the Lenape people.

Cape May was incorporated on March 8, 1848, as Cape Island Borough, was reincorporated on March 10, 1851, as Cape Island City, and took its current name on March 9, 1869.

The city's motto is "The Nation's Oldest Seashore Resort," and it is recognized as the country's oldest seaside resort, having hosted vacationers from Philadelphia since the mid-18th century.

Congress Hall, the city's grand resort hotel, was built in 1816 and still anchors the beachfront.

A five-day fire in 1878 destroyed 30 blocks of the town center, and the homes rebuilt in its place were constructed almost uniformly in the Victorian style, giving Cape May the second-largest collection of Victorian homes in the nation after San Francisco.

In 1976 the entire city was designated a National Historic Landmark as the Cape May Historic District, making it the only city in the United States wholly designated as a national historic district, with roughly 600 buildings constructed between 1850 and 1910.

The 2020 census counted 2,768 year-round residents living in 1,382 households, down from 3,607 residents in 2010.

Cape May's small year-round population swells to between 40,000 and 50,000 people during the summer season.