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New Jersey 
State bird, Eastern goldfinch. State flower, purple violet. State tree, red oak
Alongside
its revolutionary history, Thomas Paine and Walt Whitman both wrote nostalgically
of the happy years they spent there; while the northwest corner near the
Delaware Water Gap is traced with picturesque lakes, streams and woodlands.
Best of all, the Atlantic shore offers many bustling resorts, from the
tattered glitz of Atlantic City to the glorious kitsch of Wild woods and
the old world charm of 
Cape
May.
Trenton, is home to Princeton University the nation's fourth oldest, which broke away from the overly religious Yale in 1756. It began its days inauspiciously as Stony Brook in the late 1600s and then in 1724 became known as Princes Town
ATLANTIC
CITY , on Absecon Island just off the midpoint, Atlantic City is the Vegas
of the East, well known for its large beautiful Casinos, and a place
where the high rollers to try their luck.What they wanted was Monte Carlo.
They didn't want Las Vegas.
What
they got was Las Vegas. We always knew that they would get Las Vegas .
-
Stuart Mendelson, Philadelphia Journal, 1978.
ATLANTIC CITY , on Absecon Island just off the midpoint of the Jersey shoreline, has been a tourist magnet since 1854, when Philadelphia speculators created it as a rail terminal resort. In 1909, at the peak of the seaside town's popularity, Baedeker wrote "there is something colossal about its vulgarity" - a quality which it sustains today, even while beset by bankruptcy and decay. The real-life model for the board game Monopoly , it has an impressive history of popular culture, boasting the nation's first Boardwalk (1870), the world's first Big Wheel (1892), the first color postcards (1893) and the first Miss America Beauty Pageant (cunningly devised to extend the tourist season in 1921, and still held here yearly). During Prohibition and the Depression, Atlantic City was a center for rum-running, packed with speakeasies and illegal gambling dens. Thereafter, in the face of increasing competition from Florida, it slipped into a steep decline, until desperate city officials decided in 1976 to open up the decrepit resort to legal gambling .
The
Town
Arriving
by train, you'll be confronted by the monstrous Convention Center , which
opened above the station in 1997, and houses a massive food court and standard
mall shops, along with its meeting spaces and countless hotel rooms.
New Jo-sey as pronounced by the people who live in New Jersey, on the average are a friendly type of people, the state is well know all across America for its residents unique way of talking.
INLAND
NEW JERSEY
Traveling
west on the interstates from the shore or from New York City, visitors
see the New Jersey of popular imagination: heavily industrialized, a cultural
desert, peppered with run-down cities like Trenton and Paterson. Newark
, the state's largest city, is perhaps the nation's drabbest, redeemed
only by its efficient airport, new performing arts center, and views over
the Hudson to the Statue of Liberty (which is, incidentally, in New Jersey
waters). The one place that holds interest in inland New Jersey is Princeton
, an Ivy League town that makes a pretty if limited stopoff.
New Jersey's Atlantic coast, a 130-mile stretch of almost uninterrupted resorts - some rowdy, many pitifully run-down and faded, a few undeveloped and peaceful - has long been reliant on farming and tourism. No profitable ports were established, nor did short-lived attempts at whaling come to anything. In the late 1980s the whole coastline suffered severe and well-publicized pollution from ocean dumping, but today the beaches, if occasionally somewhat crowded, are safe and clean: sandy, broad and lined by characteristic wooden boardwalks , some of which, in an attempt to maintain their condition, charge admission during the summer. The rundown glitz of Atlantic City is perhaps the shore's best known attraction, but there are also quieter resorts like Spring Lake and historic Victorian Cape May , plus local gems like Wildwood that are worth the journey further down the coast.
CAPE MAY was founded in 1620 by the Dutch Captain Mey, on the small hook at the very southern tip of the Jersey coast, jutting out into the Atlantic and washed by the Delaware Bay on the west. After being briefly settled by New England whalers in the late 1600s, it turned in the eighteenth century to more profitable farming and, soon after, to tourism. In 1745 the first advertisement for Cape May's restorative air and fine accommodation appeared in the Philadelphia press, heralding a period of great prosperity, when Southern plantation owners, desiring cool sea breezes without having to venture into Yankee land, flocked to the fashionable boarding houses of this genteel "resort of Presidents."
The Victorian era was Cape May's finest; nearly all its gingerbread architecture dates from a mass rebuilding after a severe fire in 1878. However, the increase in car travel after World War I meant that vacationers could go further, more quickly and more cheaply, and the little town found itself something of an anachronism, while the gaudier charms of Atlantic City became the brightest stars on the Jersey coast. During the 1950s, Cape May began to dust off its most valuable commodity: its history. Today the whole town is a National Historic Landmark, with over six hundred Victorian buildings , tree-lined streets and beautifully kept gardens , and a lucrative B&B industry. It teeters dangerously on self-parody at times, thanks to its glut of cutesy olde shoppes, but if you avoid the main drags and wander through the back streets, you'll find an appealing combination of historical authenticity and good beaches .
Self-satisfied
PRINCETON , on US-206 eleven miles north of Trenton, is home to Princeton
University - the nation's fourth oldest, which broke away from the overly
religious Yale in 1756. It began its days inauspiciously as Stony Brook
in the late 1600s and then in 1724 became known as Princes Town, a coach
stop between New York and Philadelphia. In January 1777, a week after Washington's
triumph against the British at Trenton, the Battle of Princeton occurred
southwest of town. This victory, a turning point in the Revolutionary effort,
bolstered the morale of Washington's troops before their long winter encampment
at Morristown to the north. After the war, in 1783, the Continental Congress
, fearful of potential attack from incensed unpaid veterans in Philadelphia,
met here for four months; the leafy, well-kept town was then left in peace
to follow its academic pursuits. Graduates of the university include actor
James Stewart, jazz-age writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, and presidents Wilson
and Madison. Today, there is little to do in this sleepy place other than
tour the university and see the historic sites.
The
town and the university
Mercer
Street , the long road that sweeps southwest past the university campus
to Nassau Street, is lined with elegant colonial houses, graced with shutters,
columns and wrought-iron fences. The Princeton Battlefield State Park
Little
more than a hundred years old, the staunchly blue-collar resort of nearby
Wildwood offers a counterpoint to the old-world fakery of Cape May. The
increase in leisure time following WWII and the subsequent boom in the
vacation industry created towns like Wildwood, which sprung up to house
the newly idle sun-seekers. The 1950s architecture, left lovingly intact,
includes dozens of gaudy but fun-looking hotels with names like Pink Orchid
Waikiki and The Shalimar , all still featuring plastic palm trees, kidney-shaped
swimming pools and plenty of aqua, orange and pink paint. To best appreciate
the town's brash charm, take a stroll along the Boardwalk, and stop along
the wide, if throbbing, beaches.
