In this paper we study the reduction to characteristic $p$ of the Shimura variety associated to a unitary group which has signature $(n-1,1)$ at its real place. We describe the Newton polygon, the Ekedahl–Oort, and the final stratification. In addition we examine the moduli space of $p$-isogenies using a variant of the local model for Shimura varieties. We apply our results to obtain a proof of the Eichler–Shimura congruence relation for the case that $n$ is even.