Near the confluence of Chester Creek and the Delaware River, a small granite monument marks the site of one of the most significant events in the early history of Pennsylvania—the first disembarkment of its founder William Penn. In a plot of land that throughout history played host to a Swedish tobacco plantation, a Quaker meeting place, railroad waste, the governor’s daughter’s house, and Okehocking tribal land, the site, located in the now-city of Chester, was in the middle of Pennsylvania’s largest, oldest, and only city. After a ravaging smallpox epidemic…
