This initial trip in 1993 involved a full day of travel time; my two daughters were 5 and 3 years old, respectively, and we had to stop often. I found myself getting pretty weary as well towards the end of that day of driving, and we took one last rest stop just North of the city of Cape May in a small hamlet named Rio Grande.
Rio Grande was originally known as Hildreth, named after the family that built a General Store there around 1850. The area was located within a large plantation owned by the Aaron Leaming family, and the vicinity acquired the name “Leamings”, in deference to the owners of the land. Eventually, a direct descendant of the original land owner, the seventh Aaron Leaming, thought “Rio Grande” had an attractive sound and christened the crossroads with that name. Apparently, others liked the name as well, because despite the fact that there is no river running anywhere near the small town, the name stuck.
Although you could feel you were close to the ocean, Rio Grande wasn’t a seaside resort town; it wasn’t much of anything, actually, except a Wawa convenient mart* at the crossroads of Rts. 9 and 47, a few other structures, and acres of open farmland. Rt. 47 runs East/West between the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, specifically to Wildwood, only about 5 miles or so away from Rio Grande. Rt 9 runs parallel to the Garden State Parkway, with an exit for Wildwood where the Parkway intersects with Rt.47 on its way to the Ocean. Given the quietness of the place when I first stopped there, it seemed that most people must take the previous exit on the Garden State Parkway for North Wildwood onto Rt 147 a few miles back, or just decided to step on it and keep heading South until they reached Cape May and the very Southern tip of the State of New Jersey. Rio Grande felt like a sleepy pit stop you could choose to make before you entered the carnival atmosphere of Wildwood, or a place to stop and double check you indeed had secured the cooler chest and beach chairs to the roof of the car after you left Cape May and headed North.
How it used to be: A reconstruction of the Rio Grande train station ca.1900, in Historic Cold Spring Village, about 4 miles South of Rio Grande on Rt 9. (Image borrowed from www.hcsv.org/O_page/PressPage.htm)
At least that’s what it seemed like in 1993. 17 years later, it would appear most of the area has been paved with black top and marked off into rows for automobile parking in front of tremendous strip malls. The transformation of the area was a bit shocking to me at first. The Wawa is now a Super Wawa; the older, smaller scale regular Wawa building stands off to the side of the Super structure awaiting it’s fate, or perhaps a new tenant (a Super Duper Dunkin Donuts, perhaps?). Buildings that made the acres of black top necessary stretch from the Super Wawa on the corner of Rts. 47 and 9 to a point so far North on the horizon that you can no longer make out what exactly the business is, despite the large signs adorning the outside of the corniced facades of each retail store.
The Stores down the Shore: the big picture from behind the Wawa.
Perhaps it is a Target? Wal Mart? A Super Target…? Whatever it was, apparently enough people needed to stop there before entering Wildwood or Cape May to make this concentration of retail outlets necessary and viable.
In our case, it was the new Starbucks that made us stop at Rio Grande. Along with the Lowe’s, Michael’s, and Famous Footwear storefronts stretching out well over a quarter mile, Google maps had located the Starbucks for us in an adjacent strip mall. Apparently, neither Cape May or Wildwood has a Starbucks, and after a few days at the shore my wife Laurie was feeling the need for a coffee fixed the way she likes it. “Roughing it” to her is getting a hotel that does not have room service. Although Starbucks is a large chain of franchises, she knows she will get her coffee prepared exactly the way she likes it, whether in our home town in Pennsylvania or where she worked in Manhattan.
I’m not a coffee hound myself, but I can empathize, as I would drive a distance to get a hoagie prepared the way I like at a Wawa . The Wawa that had been in Cape May itself was shuttered and the building put up for sale, perhaps as a result of the Super Wawa a few miles away in Rio Grande. Crazy couples like us, craving caffeine and lunch meat prepared in a specific manner and willing to drive out of our way to get it, probably accounted for the big changes in the retail businesses here. I guess the developers felt confident that once we were in Rio Grande and satisfied with our deli and designer coffee selections, we’d stick around and buy some famous foot wear or select items for our bed, bath, and even beyond.
After getting the usual hot drinks at Starbucks ( A Grande, Soy, No Foam, No Whip, Two Pump Mocha for the lady, and a Tall Earl Grey Tea for me; I didn’t feel the need for a hoagie that particular day), I had to drive down the parking lot of this tremendous retail zone to see exactly what store was anchoring the other end of the parking lots. The far building turned out to be a Wal Mart, something of an anti climax, but I wasn’t really expecting anything unusual. It was a SUPER Wal Mart , though, the kind with a grocery store AND a McDonalds included within. We chose to enjoy our drinks in the car, however, and didn’t venture inside.
In it’s banality, I found the complex that seemed to have devoured the small crossroads community of Rio Grande fascinating. As we drove up the parking lot and past the ornate entrances of the chain stores on our left, we noticed a green patch of property about an acre in size jutting into the paved parking area and surrounded on three sides by parking places. It was an old cemetery with an ornate iron gate entrance, a preserved sacred plot of land that was evidence of a slower, simpler time in Leamings, when the residents still made their own coffee in the morning and probably never dreamed of something called a frappacino made with soy milk.
Saying that there has been a lot of growth and development in the area since 1993 is an understatement; the addition of the Starbucks and the improvement to the Wawa virtually guarantee that I’ll continue to stop at Rio Grande for coffee and hoagies when we make our trips to Cape May and Wildwood. If this of rate retail development continues , however, it might be known as SUPER Rio Grande by the time I make my next visit.
*For those who do not live Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virgina, or New Jersey, a Wawa is chain of great convenience stores with very good service and a good selection of food and sundry items. The corporate headquarters are located in Wawa, Pennsylvania. The name for the town is the native American Ojibwe word for the Canada Goose, and a goose in flight is featured as part of their logo. While a 7-Eleven tends to be more snack oriented, you can get a pretty good meal at a Wawa. Its just tough to say the name without thinking you’re talking like a baby.
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