In 1631, officers of the Dutch West India Company ship "The Whale" acquired 16 square miles of land, including this site, from the Lenape to support whaling and the cultivation of grains and tobacco. European settlement did not take hold until the mid-1600s, when whalers from Long Island and New England came during whaling seasons and then year-round in the 1680s, establishing the first settlement along the bay north of this site, known variously as New England Town, Cape May Town, Portsmouth, and Town Bank. Settlement was encouraged by Dr. Daniel Coxe, a London investor and Governor and primary landholder of West Jersey, who acquired 95,000 acres from the Lenape in 1688 and reported that he had settled a town and established a whale fishery near Cape May. Development accelerated in 1692, when Coxe transferred his interests to the West Jersey Society, Cape May County was established, and land was sold to whaler yeomen, coopers, carpenters, blacksmiths, weavers, and others. As whaling declined in the mid-1700s, the county's economy shifted chiefly to livestock, timber products, and oysters, and by the late 1700s encroaching waters had washed away most of the original settlement.