New Jersey Route 109
State highway in Cape May County, New Jersey, US
Route 109 is a 3.06-mile (4.92 km) state highway located in Cape May County, New Jersey, United States. The route runs from Jackson Street in Cape May north to an intersection with U.S. Route 9 (US 9) in Lower Township. It crosses one of two road bridges over the Cape May Canal (the other is Route 162) and provides access to the southern end of the Garden State Parkway and County Route 621 (CR 621, Ocean Drive) as well as to Cape May. Only the section of road in Lower Township is state maintained; the rest is maintained by Cape May County and signed as County Route 633 (CR 633), which extends 0.34 mi (0.55 km) past the southern terminus along Jackson Street and Perry Street to CR 626 in West Cape May.
Present-day Route 109 was designated as a part of pre-1927 Route 14 in 1917 before becoming the southernmost portion of Route 4 in 1927. By the 1940s, US 9 extended south to Cape May from Absecon along this part of Route 4. In 1953, the Route 4 designation was dropped from this segment of road to avoid the concurrency with US 9. In 1972, US 9 was rerouted to head to the Cape May–Lewes Ferry terminal, with the former alignment into Cape May becoming Route 109.
Route description
Route 109 begins at an intersection with CR 633 in the city of Cape May, heading to the northeast on Lafayette Street, a two-lane undivided road that is county-maintained and signed as a part of CR 633, which itself extends past the southern terminus of Route 109 along Jackson Street and Perry Street to CR 626 in West Cape May. The route passes through residential and commercial areas of Cape May, passing southeast of the terminus of the Cape May Seashore Lines railroad at the Cape May Welcome Center/Cape May Bus Terminal located at the former Cape May City Rail Terminal and intersecting the northern terminus of CR 653.
“New Jersey Route 109” enters the record as state highway in Cape May County, New Jersey, US. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Jersey, Route and State can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“New Jersey Route 109” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Jersey, Route and State provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 18, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q825549. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1927, 1917, 1953 and 1972.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “New Jersey Route 109” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.