Cape May Diaries
3- Finding Cape May?
Finding Cape May from Northern New Jersey was hardly a remarkably difficult task in 1990. For us, in meant one turn from our apartment in East Rutherford and a trip down the entire length of the Garden State Parkway with only one small detour along the New Jersey Turnpike.
Land travel before the construction of the Parkway in 1956 had always made Cape May a prohibitive destination. Easy access by boat early in its history gave Cape May a monopoly on tourist trade from Philadelphia, but the eventual development of railroads, and later highway travel, made other resort towns more accessible to visitors from Northern New Jersey.
At its inception as a resort town in the early 1800s, Cape May rarely attracted visitors from New York. People from Philadelphia, then the largest metropolis in the country, didn't bother attempting the roads, but took boats instead.
Those forced to brave the roads found their trip took two days for a one-way trip. They arrived shaken and bruised by the 110 miles of mostly wagon-rutted roads. Stagecoach service in 1801 left Camden on Thursday and arrived late on Friday. Many traders, forced to take the land route, paused halfway for lodging in order to recover.
Trains improved the overland experience -- when after much lobbying -- the state agreed to add a line to Cape May. But only after regular service had been established between Philadelphia and Atlantic City. Later, as the railroads declined with the growing popularity of automobiles, so did Cape May.
After World War Two, cars became the predominant mode of travel in the state. People, determined to find the Jewel of the Jersey Shore, had to do so by way of state Highway 9. Even trips half the distance to Cape May became a nightmare of congestion.
Before the construction of the Garden State Parkway, Route 9 served as Northern New Jersey's main thoroughfare to the shore. My family often drove its narrow lanes to Tom's River and Bayshore, suffering hours of bumper to bumper traffic in order to sit out on the beach.
Rebuilding Cape May after the 1962 storm might not have been possible if not for the construction of the Garden State Parkway, allowing motorists smooth driving most of the way.
While it may seem like the state constructed the Garden State Parkway to provide access to Cape May, in truth locals struggled to get the last few miles completed. During the highway's construction in 1950s, Atlantic City, Seaside Heights and other shore communities seemed to benefit most. Cape May was a ghost town, forgotten at the extreme southern tip of the state with limited rail service and narrow lanes for cars.
While a few hearty souls talked about restoring Cape May to its former glory, few took action until a 1962 hurricane reeked havoc on the tiny town, tearing up its boardwalk as if constructed of Popsicle sticks.
More out of curiosity than need, I took advantage of AAA's trip planning service -- something made less necessary with the advent of modern computers and trip-planning software. AAA complied with my request, although someone in their organization must have been a bit puzzled when marking the map they sent back, highlighting the Parkway the whole way south.
Who could have guessed that the same road construction that ended a way of life in one part of the state would give rebirth to life in another?
Yet in 1952 when the construction of the New Jersey Turnpike put a final end to pig farming and vegetable growing in Secaucus, it opened up easier access to the more distant parts of the state like Cape May, setting the first state for its revival. Even as we traveled south along the Turnpike's wide lands for our first visit, plans were underway to make the state even more accessible.
The history of Cape May has always shown it to be vulnerable to changes made at a distance. Although first noted in a log by Henry Hudson, Cape Isle soon became home to whalers, who later turned into farmers when the whales ran out, and these turned to hotel clerks when decisions made into Philadelphia turned Cape May into a tourist destination. When Philadelphia decided to build a railroad to Atlantic City tourist trade tried up -- until locals convince the railroads to run a line to the Cape. Then, when the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania to build a bridge over the Delaware that would allow auto traffic access to the Jersey Shore, the railroads to Cape May died.
While we believed we traveled south because of our honeymoon, we were actually part of a new wave, a flow of traffic flowing along easy access roads into a backwater part of the state. They would hardly recover, their rural nature forever altered.
While we were hardly pioneers in our trip south in 1990 -- my wife's friend in Manhattan boasted of Cape May's virtues from early in the 1980s -- we seemed to catch the tail end of a simpler era, when much of the complex character of its residents remained from an earlier tradition.
Although we learned that most stores, restaurants and other commercial establishments in Cape May took credit cards, our motel's refusal seems to echo the mistrusts local had for the season visitor and the resentment year-round residents historically felt for the "day trippers" or "shoobies," as locals once called us. In the 1800s, some tourists would arrive in Cape May bringing their own lunches, walk around the town for the day, then leave, without purchasing anything from local merchants.
At the same time, we discovered some full-time Cape May residents also displayed a naive trust typical of many small towns throughout the state -- as was made evident concerning the matter of the key.
Without going to into the details of tour wedding and associated follies, we did not realize until after we had made final preparations that we would likely arrive much later than we first thought. Since most of my family living in Tom's River could not come north for the ceremony, we intended to stop on our way south, causing even additional delay. Even if all went well, we were unlikely to make the 10 p.m. curfew when the motel office closed. We called ahead.
"No problem," the hotel clerk said. "We'll leave the key under the mat."
Fewer statements could have jarred us jagged residents of North Jersey more, nor shaken the earlier impression of Cape May people as cold. Even after a decade of traveling south to that part of the state, I remain puzzled by their mixture of standoffishness and basic hospitality. Perhaps it location just south of the Mason-Dixon Line may have explained them better. I had come across similar dualities visiting family members in South Carolina. Indeed, in its long history, Cape May maintained strong connections with the Southern States, drawing many tourists across the Delaware Bay before the American Civil War severed the connection, when Cape May sided with the North instead of the south.