Barrier islands help create the inland waterway that extends all along the Atlantic coast, and in 1692 when Cape May County was organized, John Peck, a whaler who used the northernmost beach along the county’s coast to render blubber from whales, had the distinction of having the island named Peck’s Beach in his honor.

   Just prior to the Civil War in 1864, a man named Parker Miller built a house where Wards Pastry now stands in Ocean City, New Jersey. Miller was an agent for marine insurance companies, and he lived on Peck’s Beach so that he could report shipwrecks, keep away scavengers, and do his best to insure that the marine merchants were kept happy.

   Twenty years later a group of Methodist ministers left the town of Pleasantville and sailed to Peck’s Beach to examine they property they intended to purchase for a Christian retreat. The Reverends S. Wesley Lake, Ezra B. Lake, James E. Lake and William H. Burrell went ashore in the area that one day would be Second Street to kneel and pray for God’s blessing beneath a cedar tree on September 10, 1879. On October 20^th of that same year the Honorable Simon Lake and William B. Wood joined with the other four to celebrate the incorporation of their association.

   Peck’s Beach was renamed Ocean City one month later, and five years later in 1884 Ocean City officially became a borough, and in 1897 the Borough of Ocean City became the city of Ocean City.

   From its beginning Ocean City was formed to be a place where families and individuals could come to enjoy sunshine, sea air, swimming, sandy beaches, and good times. All of those things still flourish today, and that’s why Ocean City, New Jersey is America’s Greatest Year-Round Family Resort.