About 30,000 years ago, groups of people crossed over from present-day Siberia to Alaska before moving on and settling along the Atlantic seaboard of today’s United States. Their descendants became the Lenape tribe, part of the Algonquin nation whose members lived in what now is New Jersey.
These people were followed by Jeremiah Leeds, a Revolutionary War veteran who, evidence suggests, established a farm in 1783 on Absecon Island, a barrier atoll just offshore. Over time, a town developed in the region which took the name Atlantic City.
