Westkapelle is small city facing the lower North Sea and the English Channel beyond that. There are two lighthouses in the city, one which built on top of a church nave that was originally built in the 15th century. The nave was the only thing left after a fire destroyed the church. The lighthouse can be seen 28 nautical miles out to sea. It is 53 meters (173.9 feet) tall and 168 steps to the top and offers great views of the city and surrounding countryside. With the second smaller lighthouse, they form leading lights that lead ships into the Scheldt River with ports in Vlissingen (at the mouth of the river) and Antwerp in Belgium as well as Ghent and Terneuzen.

During World War II, the British bombed the dyke in order to flood Walcheren Island to chase the Germans out. As I read it at the museum, there were some drowning deaths when locals sought refuge in the city's windmill (molen in Dutch). The Germans built bunkers all around Walcheren Island as part of the Atlantic Wall and the Allies needed to remove the Germans from the surrounding area so they could utilize the port of Antwerp that was captured earlier to help with supplying the troops as they pushed into Germany near Aachen. The city put an M4 Sherman on the rebuilt dyke as a memorial to those who fought to free the Dutch from German control.