It is located north of the island's main town, Westerland, and was first recorded in 1534.
Like all municipalities on Sylt, Kampen is highly specialised on the tourism business, so that an economical monostructure can be found there.
Due to the touristical monostructure, predominantly subsidiaries of upscale retail businesses can be found in Kampen, such as designer shops and jewellers, but also a number of service enterprises, crafts and accommodation facilities.
Roughly three kilometres north of Kampen the Kampen decoy pond can be found. Nowadays this nature reserve is a resort for numerous species of water birds. Already in 1767 a pond for catching ducks was located here.
East of Kampen the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Park extends, in summer the municipality offers guided mudflat hikings there.
There are also numerous studios and galleries of notable artists in Kampen.
On the western heath several neolithic dolmens are located. As they are not marked, they are relatively untouched by tourism, also the ancient ring wall of Kampen remains largely unnoticed.
For more than 150 years the Kampen lighthouse is now situated on the higher geestland core south of the village the. It is 40 metres tall with a black and white marking. Another, smaller lighthouse is located north of Kampen on the red cliff. It served as a supplement to the main light from 1913 to 1975.
