The Cove Beach is an area with a long and storied history. Once home to a little town called South Cape May, the shoreline of the area has undergone tremendous changes over the years. South Cape May, with its' famous rail line to Cape May Point, was washed out to sea in a succession of storms. Very interesting and detailed maps of the progression of these events are on display in the museum at the Cape May Point State Park, where the Lighthouse is located. Now officially referred to as South Cape Meadows, the landmass is a combination of land owned by the City of Cape May and the adjoining Lower Township. The area's beachfront, the Cove Beach, contains land purchased for preservation by the Nature Conservancy as well as the section utilized for active recreation and swimming. The Nature Conservancy lands are reserved for the breeding of the Piping Plover, which is an endangered species.

The frequent fluctuations of the shoreline at the Cove Beach have continued for decades. However, dramatically changing things recently, the Cove Beach has been the unintended beneficiary of tremendous quantities of sand migrating off of the beaches of the City of Cape May. Cape May City beaches began to be replenished (with sand pumped from offshore with dredges) every other year by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers starting in the early 90's. As a result of studying the eroded beaches of the Cape May City beachfront, the Army Corps determined that their installation of two long rock jetties to establish and maintain the entrance into Cape May Harbor in the early part of the 20th century interfered with the natural movement of sand in this environment from north to south. Thus, the beaches north of Cape May, i.e., the Wildwoods, were growing and growing while Cape May's beaches, to the south, were starved of their natural replenishment of sand. Since the Army Corps project began, much of this pumped sand ends up being washed down the beach to the Cove Beach, particularly after any major storms, validating the determination that the natural movement of the sand is from north to south, at least in this part of the world.

As a side note, the Army Corps project has been a major success, in spite of some of the sand washing down to the Cove Beach. Much sand also has been retained along the beachfront of the City of Cape May, creating a continuous strand of clean, maintained and well guarded beaches. With tourism ranked as one of our very largest industries in New Jersey, these replenished beaches have not only contributed tremendously to our local economy, they have also supported stable and even rapidly appreciating real estate values which could easily be undermined by an eroded and unusable beachfront.

Finally, the success of the beachfront replenishment project can be measured in the increased safety of our citizens and visitors as well as the dramatically reduced storm damage experienced by the homes and businesses located in our little town since the beaches have been stabilized by the Army Corps.