Pennsauken

About Pennsauken

On a June night in 1933, cars rolled into rows on Pennsauken's border with Camden to watch a movie on an outdoor screen, the first drive-in theater in the world. That small piece of pop culture history fits this working township on the Delaware River, a place of rail lines, factories and tidy postwar neighborhoods directly across the water from Philadelphia.

Pennsauken holds some unexpected stops for history fans. Peter J. McGuire, the carpenters' union leader often credited with proposing Labor Day, is buried in Arlington Cemetery here beneath a memorial, and colonial farmhouses such as the Burrough-Dover House recall the farm families who settled here in colonial times. Out in the river, Petty Island is slowly turning from an oil storage depot into a nature preserve where bald eagles nest.

The River LINE light rail runs through town on its way between Camden and Trenton, Cooper River Park lies along the township's southern edge, and Center City Philadelphia is about twenty minutes away across the Betsy Ross or Tacony-Palmyra bridges, making Pennsauken an affordable base for both.