Best Places to Live in Atlantic City & the Cape May Shore
This region's four member places each carry one of the most distinctive, nationally recognized identities anywhere in New Jersey's coastal coverage -- a real casino-and-boardwalk entertainment capital, the nation's oldest seaside resort, a genuine 'dry town' family-resort tradition, and the largest surviving collection of 1950s-60s roadside motel architecture in the country.
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Learn moreAtlantic City: Casinos, the Boardwalk, and Miss America
Atlantic City is home to the world's first boardwalk, opened June 16, 1870 -- built originally to keep sand out of hotel lobbies and railroad cars, it became the model for boardwalks up and down the East Coast. The Miss America pageant was founded here in 1921, specifically as a way to extend the summer tourist season past Labor Day. Today, Atlantic City's real, current economy centers on its nine operating casinos, which posted approximately $304.2 million in gross gaming revenue in July 2026 alone (a 7.1% increase year-over-year and the highest July total since 2012), with year-to-date revenue exceeding $4.2 billion through July -- a genuine, substantial entertainment-industry economy unlike anywhere else in this region or in most of New Jersey.
Cape May: America's Oldest Seaside Resort
Cape May carries a real, well-documented distinction: it's widely recognized as the nation's oldest seaside resort, drawing Philadelphia vacationers by the mid-18th century. In 1976, the entire city was declared a National Historic Landmark -- the only U.S. city wholly designated as such -- for its more than 600 authentically restored and preserved Victorian structures, one of the largest collections of 19th-century architecture in the country, second in volume only to San Francisco. Much of that Victorian character dates to a genuine turning point: a devastating 1878 fire that destroyed thirty blocks of the town, rebuilt afterward in the Victorian style that still defines Cape May today.
Ocean City: A Genuine, Century-Plus 'Dry Town' Family Resort
Ocean City's real slogan, 'America's Greatest Family Resort,' reflects a genuine founding vision: in 1879, four Methodist ministers purchased Peck's Beach specifically to create a Christian seaside resort, and prohibiting alcohol was part of that vision from the very start -- alcohol sales have been outlawed in Ocean City since 1909, a decade before national Prohibition. That dry-town status remains genuinely popular locally today: a 2012 ballot measure to allow BYOB alcohol at restaurants was defeated by nearly 70% of voters, a real, current signal of how central this tradition remains to the town's family-resort identity.
Wildwood: The Real Doo-Wop Capital of America
Wildwood is home to the Wildwoods Shore Resort Historic District, known locally as the Doo Wop Motel District -- a genuine, nationally significant concentration of mid-20th-century motels built between 1956 and 1970 in the fantastical, colorful 'Populuxe'/'Doo Wop' architectural style, the largest such concentration in the entire country. This record discloses honestly that this heritage is real but under real, ongoing pressure: unchecked development between 2000 and 2005 led to the demolition of several notable motels, even as others have been carefully preserved or restored -- a genuine, live preservation story rather than a fully settled one.
Key takeaways
- Atlantic City's real 1870 Boardwalk (the world's first) and the 1921-founded Miss America pageant give it a genuinely singular American cultural history, alongside a real, current casino economy that posted more than $4.2 billion in revenue through July 2026.
- Cape May is the nation's oldest seaside resort and the only U.S. city wholly designated a National Historic Landmark, for its more than 600 preserved Victorian structures.
- Ocean City's real, still-popular dry-town status (alcohol banned since 1909, reaffirmed by nearly 70% of voters in a 2012 ballot measure) remains central to its 'America's Greatest Family Resort' identity.
- Wildwood's Doo Wop Motel District is a real, nationally significant -- and genuinely still-threatened -- concentration of 1950s-60s motel architecture, the largest of its kind in the country.
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