As a lover of maps, I’ve often be intrigued by the environs of the Delaware River. As the tides go up and down, the timelessness of the river becomes a kind of gentle solace to the industrialization along its banks. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the islands which somehow remain in its course. I’ve camped at Pea Patch Island down by Delaware and found a surprising family connection in its convoluted ownership. But closer to my commute is Petty Island, sitting alongside the New Jersey mainland a short distance north of the Ben Franklin Bridge.
Petty Island is owned by the Citgo oil company and until just a few months ago was still dotted with its oil tanks and a large marine cargo facility. Satellite views still show this twentieth century industry. But in a very long and oftentimes-uncertain process it’s due to become part of New Jersey natural lands and eventually to become a preserve. The public is generally still not allowed on the island but there are occasional trips and on this past Saturday I got to tour the island.
We were very lucky to have Bob Shinn as our tour guide. He’s a walking encyclopedia of the island and the state geopolitics and waves of names and commercial uses it’s been through. He literally wrote the entry on Petty Island in the Philadelphia Encyclopedia. Not surprisingly there’s a lot of Quakers in the early recorded history and the deed between the first Quaker owner and three Lenape representatives is intact in the Haverford College collections (this deed was also a major part of a talk by Lenape – settler history given by Jean Soderlund a few months ago at Rancocas Meeting (see also her book Lenape Country)).
The ever-changing, never-settled history of the island continues with its name. Wikipedia, Google Maps, and — most importantly — Bob Shinn call it “Petty Island,” while the guard shack, welcome sign, NJ Audubon Society, and New Jersey Natural Lands Trust adds the possessive to make it “Petty’s Island.” The latter is especially awkward-sounding to my ears, as South Jersey place names characteristically drop the apostrophes over time (for example, the river landing named after Captain George May is now the town of “Mays Landing.”)
Remnants of the industrialization remain: the massive three-story loading facility has been kept to become the bones of a future visitors center; the adjacent asphalt parking area has just been replanted as a meadow and is mostly a lot of rocks and short blades of grass (with some Fowler’s toads!). We were lucky enough to be the first public group to be there since this had all been cleared away.
Bonus: I didn’t realize till we were about to get in our cars that South Jersey Trails was also on the tour. He wrote it up too! If you look carefully, I’m in the background of one of the shots, and now that I’m looking I think that’s him in some of mine.
