Lower Cooper River

Until the Camden County Parks Commission constructed a concrete tidal gate across the Cooper east of Kaighn Avenue in 1938, the Cooper River was navigable from the Delaware River to Grove Street in Haddonfield where it was about 40 feet wi... Read more

The park built along Admiral Wilson Boulevard by the Delaware River Port Authority in 2000, was initially meant to provide a scenic view for those traveling from NJ to Philadelphia for the Republican National Convention. The green space rep... Read more

Farnum Park/ Pavilion- Once the site of a beautiful city park where the brick pavilion offered shade and a vendor sold ice cream. Farnum Park is now under water because of a Dyke that was breached in a hurricane in the 1970s. The skeletal r... Read more

Baird Street Bridge- Originally built in 1903, the Baird St. Bridge serves as a critical connection in the city from north to south. It is marked as a historical landmark.  

Red Hill- Bank located in Forest Hill Park, once the site of a confrontation between Dutch fur traders in 1632 and the residing Native Americans. .Dutch Navigator David Pietersz de Vries was the first European to sail up the Cooper River w... Read more

Camden Swimming Pool- A park with a swimming facility designated for whites where they served 145,000 people. A pool in South Camden was constructed for people of color. In 1929 the Camden County Park Commission began constructing a county ... Read more

Campbell’s Soup Company- Campbell’s Soup acquired property for its test kitchens, research lab, and what remains its world headquarters today. John and Jesse Starr purchased land from the Richard M. Cooper estate in 1847 to construct th... Read more

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 ... Read more

Lightship (Barnegat)- Built in 1904 by NY Shipbuilding in Camden, vessel was used to inspect incoming boats in the Delaware during WWII.A Boarding party would determine a ship’s identity, cargo, homeport and last port of call. If cleared,... Read more

Petty’s Island- Once prime fishing and hunting grounds for the Lenni Lenape Indians, Petty’s Island is a naturally diverse island. It is home to the water marigold, a rare plant found only on the Delaware River. Petty’s is currently i... Read more

William Cooper built a house above the Delaware River and named the adjacent land Pyne Poynt for the tall pine forest that grew there.  William’s son Joseph obtained a Dutch style one story house built in 1695 from his father here in 170... Read more

The first bridge across the Cooper closest to its confluence with the Delaware River is the State Street Bridge.  Daniel Bishop built a bridge in this location in 1857.  Benjamin Sweeten built a replacement “Warren Through-Truss” cent... Read more

Benjamin Cooper, grandson of William Cooper, the emigrant, built this two and a half story gambrel-roofed stone house located at Point and Erie Streets in 1734.  When the British Army occupied Philadelphia in 1777-78, the commander of its ... Read more

The long oared wherry carried people, horses, and carriages across the Delaware River. Early Quaker settlers took turns crossing the river on alternate months to attend the monthly meeting at William Cooper’s Pyne Poynt home and Thomas Fa... Read more

fisheries were Camden’s first industries as shown on the circa 1810 map above. Fishermen caught shad by the ton along the shore near the confluence of the Cooper and Delaware. John McPhee’s The Founding Fish traced the shad’s demise s... Read more

Pomona Hall, also called the Joseph Cooper House, is shown in this November 1925 photo shortly after it became the headquarters of the combined Camden City and Camden County Historical Society. Joseph Cooper, Jr., grandson of the first Will... Read more

Walt Whitman, the great American poet, designed his own tomb to resemble an etching by poet William Blake. Two women in Victorian dress visit Whitman’s tomb in the circa 1900 photo above. Whitman moved to Camden in 1873 where he completed... Read more

Richard Milton Hollingshead, Jr. patented the first drive-in movie theater in May 1933 because his mother was too large to fit into a regular movie theater seat. Using his car, a 1928 Kodak movie projector, and two sheets nailed between tw... Read more