Founding year: the first Woodbine post office (Blevins & Helbock, CC0).The full story ↓
History grade
What drives Woodbine’s History grade
On its age, its old homes and the National Register, Woodbine is more historic than 64% of U.S. towns. Its share of homes from before 1940 holds the grade up; its age pulls it down.
B
HistoryA character grade: shown, never part of Woodbine’s overall grade.
New Jersey towns list more on the Register than most of the country (a typical New Jersey town has 3.7 per 10,000 residents, the U.S. 2.4), so Woodbine’s 4.9 sits near the middle of its state (56% of New Jersey towns have fewer) while its 1 listings outnumber those of 51% of U.S. towns.
How sure. Graded on any two of the three inputs instead, the letter would range from C+ to A−. The pre-1940 share is a Census survey estimate (±6.6 points). The founding year is the first post office, not a stated founding date.
Founding year: the first post office (other dates in Quick answers). Homes: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register: National Park Service, May 2026 list; each listing counted once (boundary changes and added documentation belong to their listing), and a historic district counts its contributing buildings. How TownRatings grades history →
What stands out about Woodbine’s past
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Woodbine was founded in 1891 as a settlement for Eastern European Jews. The Baron DeHirsch Fund, organized by philanthropist Maurice de Hirsch, purchased 5,300 acres (21 km2) of land in Dennis Township in Cape May County to start a settlement. Immigrants from Poland and Russia were invited to settle the new community. Within two years, they cleared the forest and built a settlement with thriving farms, with 800 acres (3.2 km2) of land set aside as town lots. The residential center of Woodbine still uses the same grid that was originally laid out in 1891. Using modern agricultural practices under the direction of agriculturist and chemist Hirsch Loeb Sabsovich, the first colonists (Woodbine was sometimes called the "Jewish Colony" in the early days) turned Woodbine into a model agricultural community. The Woodbine colony and all other South Jersey Jewish farming colonies actively sought …
Passages that mention Woodbine, cut from the printed page as they were published.
The history of Cape May County, New Jersey1897 · page 395Read the page →
Read the text
The Jewish colony at Woodbine was founded in 1891. It was early in the spring of that year that the American trustees of the Baron Hirsch Fund closed negotiations by purchasing 5100 acres of land in and around Woodbine from Mr. John M. Moore, the Clayton, N. J., glass manufacturer, for $39,000. Before the purchase was completed the titles were searched back to the days of the "West Jersey Society."
Text read by machine from the scan; it may contain errors.
Scans and text from the Internet Archive. Books published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
Timeline
Woodbine, 1888 to 1933
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
Nothing in the archives for these yearsWeddings on Main Street, storms, parades, school pictures, the old store. If it’s in your family album, it belongs here.
The Woodbine post office opened in 1891, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
How does Woodbine rank for history?
Woodbine is more historic than 64% of U.S. towns. The History grade combines the town’s founding era, the share of homes built before 1940 and its National Register listings. It’s a character grade, so it isn’t part of the overall grade. How it works.
What is on the National Register in Woodbine?
One place: the Woodbine Brotherhood Synagogue (listed 1980).
How old are the homes in Woodbine?
29% of Woodbine’s homes were built before 1940 (Census estimate, ±6.6 points), against a typical 15% for a New Jersey town; the median home was built in 1962.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
From Wikimedia Commons (6), the Library of Congress (1), Wikidata (1), the National Register of Historic Places (1), Wikipedia, Wikidata and Wikipedia for famous people, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System, Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress) and old county and town histories (Internet Archive). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
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