Federal Street Bridge/ Old incinerator

Federal Street Bridge/ Old incinerator- Early 1700’s Cooper River had a ferry to transport people to Mt.Holly and other towns North. 1762- Bridge was constructed to make travel easier. Incinerator was once a site of a crematory in the early 1900’s; it was later used to burn trash.

Thomas Spicer established a ferry across the Cooper and a tavern on the eastern bank in 1736 near today’s Federal Street Bridge shown in an “open position” in the photo above. While Haddonfield merchants opposed building a bridge in Camden on grounds that it would block navigation and divert commerce from Haddonfield, proponents went ahead and built one at Spicer’s crossing in 1762 to make travel to Coopers Ferry more convenient along the Burlington Road. General George Washington ordered the bridge destroyed in 1778 to impede British soldiers who foraged and looted the countryside around Camden during their Philadelphia occupation. A small battle was fought on both sides of this location during the American Revolution. The 1868 iron center-pivot bridge was replaced by the present single-leaf bascule span (shown in the photo above) built by Sherzer Rolling Bridge in 1908. Camden City rehabilitated, strengthened, and permanently pinned the bridge shut in the early 1990s.