856 Area Code – Camden, New Jersey: Location, Time Zone & History

South Jersey's numbering territory once belonged entirely to area code 609, but the spread of fax machines, pagers, and early cell phones pushed that code toward exhaustion. In 1999, the southwestern portion covering Camden, Gloucester, Cumberland, and Salem counties, plus western Burlington County, split off to form area code 856, entering service June 14, 1999 with permissive dialing alongside 609 continuing until that November.

Cherry Hill grew to overtake Camden as South Jersey's largest municipality, anchoring the region's retail and suburban office economy around Cherry Hill Mall, while Camden's own waterfront redevelopment brought the Battleship New Jersey Museum, the Adventure Aquarium, and the new Subaru of America headquarters built on former Campbell Soup land. Vineland, founded in 1861 by Charles K. Landis with Italian immigrant families recruited to grow grapes and produce, later earned a reputation as "the Egg Basket of America."

The region's economy blends healthcare and higher education around Cooper University Health Care and Rutgers-Camden, agriculture centered on Vineland's truck farms, and South Jersey's historic glass manufacturing tradition rooted in Cumberland County's silica sand. In 2021, mandatory ten-digit local dialing arrived, prompted by the nationwide reservation of the 988 code for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.