Cape May: Victorian Architecture, Birding & Delaware Bay Shore

The Victorian District occupies the entire town of Cape May — 600 buildings in Queen Anne, Italianate, and Second Empire styles concentrated in a half-square-mile area bounded by Beach Avenue, Washington Street, and the ocean. The Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts runs guided tours of the major mansions; the self-guided walking tour maps are available at the Welcome Center on Washington Mall. The Emlen Physick Estate (1879) is the finest single example of the stick style in the US.

A 235-acre park at the absolute tip of the New Jersey peninsula, with a restored 1859 lighthouse, a World War II concrete bunker on the beach, and birding trails through freshwater wetlands that are the finest on-shore raptor watching on the East Coast. The hawk count at Cape May Point has run continuously since 1935 — the most complete long-term raptor migration dataset in North America; 10,000+ hawks cross the point on peak September days.

The Delaware Bay side of the Cape May peninsula in May is the site of the largest shorebird concentration in the Western Hemisphere — 1.5 million Red Knots, Ruddy Turnstones, and Sanderlings arrive to feed on horseshoe crab eggs during the May spawning. Higbee Beach's wooded edge is a migrant trap for songbirds in spring and fall; the morning warbler fallout on peak days can exceed 30 species in a 2-hour walk.

A 11,000-acre refuge on the bay side of the Cape May peninsula, with 25 miles of trails through freshwater ponds, salt marsh, and Atlantic white cedar forest. The Woodcock Trail (1 mile) circles a pond used by wood ducks, great blue herons, and in migration, shorebirds; the New England Road section crosses the oldest Atlantic white cedar swamp in southern New Jersey.

A Cape May restaurant on Decatur Street, serving New Jersey seafood in a 19th-century building with the town's most formal dining room outside the Virginia Hotel. The striped bass, the scallops from Cape May harbor, and the house-made pasta are the menu's anchors; the wine list runs 400 bottles.

A 22-acre living history museum reproducing an 1850 South Jersey village on the original site of the 1691 Cold Spring settlement — 25 restored buildings with costumed interpreters demonstrating period crafts: pottery, weaving, blacksmithing, and 19th-century printing. The village's position in pine barrens upland 5 miles from the beach represents the agricultural counterpart to the fishing and resort economy of the shoreline.

An 85-minute ferry crossing of the mouth of Delaware Bay between Cape May and Lewes, Delaware — one of the most scenic ferry crossings on the East Coast, passing through the main shipping channel to the Port of Philadelphia with views of both the New Jersey and Delaware shores simultaneously. The ferry is a 320-vehicle vessel; the upper deck observation area is the standard for the crossing in good weather.

A 5,193-acre state park on the Lewes shore, with the site of Fort Miles — a World War II coastal defense installation with 12-inch gun batteries preserved in their concrete emplacements. The Observation Tower, a 75-foot steel structure from the fort, provides views of the Delaware Bay, the Atlantic, and the Cape May shore across the bay. The park's oceanfront beach is the finest in Delaware.

A Lewes restaurant on the Lewes-Rehoboth Canal, serving Delaware Bay seafood and Mid-Atlantic farm ingredients in a room above the working canal. The blue crab from the Delaware Bay, the local rockfish, and the Delaware sweet corn in season are the kitchen's seasonal anchors.

Delaware's first town, established by the Dutch West India Company in 1631 and continuously occupied since — the historic district preserves 18th and early 19th-century buildings in the original town plan. The Zwaanendael Museum, built in 1931 to resemble the 1632 Hoorn City Hall in the Netherlands, documents Delaware's Dutch colonial origins; the Ryves Holt House (1665) is the oldest surviving house in Delaware.