Main Street, Mays Landing-The Early Years

Mays Landing was designated the county seat on May 10, 1837. Soon a courthouse, jail and offices for the sheriff, clerk, and surrogate were constructed on the site that became the center for county business. 

Mays Landing Presbyterian Church, First United Methodist Church of Mays Landing, St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church

Banking institutions, merchants

Tavern, hotel, opera house, movie house

First factory in Mays Landing, owned by R.D. Wood & Sons. Employed generations of South Jersey families for over eighty years.

Built for mill employees,  providing all the necessities to sustain their homes and families. A ledger account enabled workers to borrow against their wages for supplies.

Built for children of mill families. One teacher taught a class of kindergarten through eighth grade.

The cotton mill used trains to bring in their raw materials then export their finished products. In 1880 excursion trains began running service from Philadelphia to Atlantic City.

Where the story began...

The schooner "License" was built for Capt. John Pennington and carried sugar up the Great Egg Harbor River where it was then stored near Babcock’s Creek at the foot of a hill. This favored storage spot later became known as "Sugar Hill".

Mays Landing shipwrights included George May, George Wheaton, Samuel Gaskill, James &  John Clark and Nicholas Lane.

Shipbuilding reached it's height from 1830 to 1880, with more than two hundred vessels being built along the Great Egg Harbor River.

As a project through FDR's Works Projects Administration (WPA), a bulkhead was created to form Gaskill Park. Once  a deep water port for merchant schooners on the Great Egg Harbor River, it was filled and converted into a public park with funds provided by the government program following the Great Depression.