COURT HOUSE – Middle Township, as its Mayor Timothy Donohue often says, is at the center of many things in Cape May County. Now, the U.S. Census Bureau has confirmed it.
Based on the results of the 2020 census, the mean center of the population for Cape May County is at latitude +39.096879 and longitude -074.806953. That places the center of the population in Middle Township. The exact location abuts the Garden State Parkway, not far from the county office complex on Moore Road.
The center of the population is that point at which an imaginary scale would balance if weights representing the county’s total population were placed on each side.
The nation’s mean center of the population is in Wright County, Missouri, with the nearest incorporated municipality being Hartville, a town of 594 individuals, 15 miles away. This balance point of the nation’s population has never been as west or as south as it was for the 2020 census.
The first center of the national population was in Kent County, Maryland, 23 miles from Baltimore, Maryland, in 1790. Since then, the center of the population has moved west, now with a pull southward, as well. The movement reflects the nation’s migration patterns.
