Salem County was founded before Philadelphia and still throws a rodeo every Saturday

Salem County’s been here since 1675

Most people skip right past Salem County on the way to the Jersey Shore. That’s a mistake.

This stretch of southwestern New Jersey sits along the Delaware River, about 35 miles south of Philadelphia, and it was here before Philadelphia even existed.

Quaker settlers landed in 1675, and the history never stopped piling up.

You’ll find Civil War cemeteries, Underground Railroad safe houses, patterned brick mansions, and a rodeo that fills 4,000 seats every Saturday night.

The road south from Philly takes less than an hour, but it drops you back about 350 years.

Quakers sailed the Griffin here seven years before Philadelphia

In 1675, a Quaker named John Fenwick sailed from London aboard a ship called the Griffin and landed along the Delaware River. He called the settlement New Salem, a word that means peace.

It became the first English settlement in West Jersey and the first Quaker colony in North America. Philadelphia wouldn’t exist for another seven years.

You can still trace that founding story through the buildings, burial grounds and brick homes that line the county today.

A 500-year-old oak held a peace treaty in its shade

Fenwick reportedly signed a peace treaty with the local Lenni-Lenape people beneath a white oak that grew in the Salem Friends Burial Ground. That tree stood for more than 500 years.

At its peak, it reached 103 feet tall with a trunk 22 feet around and a crown stretching 104 feet wide.

The Salem Oak fell on June 6, 2019, after years of declining health, but before it came down, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection collected acorns and grew over 1,200 seedlings. Every one of New Jersey’s 565 municipalities received one.

Walk through gun batteries at Fort Mott State Park

Fort Mott State Park sits right on the Delaware River in Pennsville, in the northern part of the county. The military built it in the late 1800s as part of a three-fort defense system to protect Philadelphia’s port.

The other two forts sat in Delaware, one on Pea Patch Island.

In 1896, crews installed 10-inch and 12-inch guns on disappearing carriages behind a thick concrete wall.

You can walk through the old batteries, stop by the museum and look out across the river from the same spot soldiers once guarded.

A 115-foot iron lighthouse hauled in by mule wagons

Near Fort Mott, a wrought-iron tower rises about 115 feet above the ground.

The Finns Point Rear Range Lighthouse went up in 1876 to guide ships through the upper Delaware Bay.

Workers manufactured it in Buffalo, N.Y., shipped it by rail to Salem and then hauled the pieces to the site on mule-drawn wagons.

The lighthouse now sits on the National Register of Historic Places and falls within the Supawna Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. You can visit on limited tour days throughout the year.

Spot bald eagles across 3,000 acres of tidal marsh

Just north of the Salem River, about 3,000 acres of brackish tidal marsh make up the Supawna Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.

The refuge sits along the Atlantic Flyway, one of four major migration corridors in the country, and marshland covers about 80 percent of it.

You might see black ducks, mallards, northern pintails, sandpipers, ospreys and bald eagles depending on the season.

Nearby Pea Patch Island holds the largest wading bird rookery on the East Coast north of Florida, with over 6,000 nesting pairs of nine species. Two trails let you hike through it all.

Over 2,400 Confederate soldiers rest at Finns Point

Right next to Fort Mott, Finns Point National Cemetery covers 4.6 acres and holds more than 3,000 graves. The cemetery started in the 1860s as a burial ground for Confederate prisoners of war who died at Fort Delaware.

More than 2,400 of them lie here, along with 135 Union guards who died while on duty.

A tall granite and concrete Confederate monument stands on the grounds, and a separate Union monument marks the other side. The National Register of Historic Places added the cemetery in 1978.

Blue-glazed bricks spell out dates on 300-year-old walls

Salem County holds one of the best collections of Colonial-era patterned brick houses in the country.

Quaker masons from England created the style using vitrified, or blue-glazed, bricks set against red bricks to form decorative patterns, dates and initials right on the walls.

The Hancock House, built in 1734, shows a Flemish Bond checkerboard and herringbone design on its end walls.

The Abel and Mary Nicholson House, built in 1722, has never been updated with heat or electricity, and it’s a National Historic Landmark.

The first Black attorney at the Supreme Court studied here

The Salem County Historical Society sits in four connected historic buildings on Market Street in downtown Salem. The centerpiece is the Alexander Grant House, a patterned brick mansion built in 1721.

Inside, you’ll find exhibits on the Revolutionary War, early American glass from the Wistarburgh Glass Works, and local history going back centuries.

The building also holds a research library packed with old newspapers, photographs and genealogical records. Before 1850, John S. Rock studied dentistry here.

He went on to become the first African American attorney admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Freedom seekers crossed the Delaware to Salem’s safe houses

Salem sat on a key stretch of the Underground Railroad.

People escaping slavery in Delaware, Maryland and Virginia crossed the Delaware River to reach Salem and the protection of abolitionist networks waiting on the other side.

Quaker sisters Abigail and Elizabeth Goodwin ran a safe house from their home on Market Street.

In 2008, the Goodwin Sisters House became the first site in New Jersey accepted into the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

You can follow the Seven Steps to Freedom trail, which links seven sites across the county that tell this story.

Bull riding every Saturday night since 1955

Cowtown Rodeo in Pilesgrove is the longest-running weekly professional rodeo in the country. Howard Harris Sr. and his son started it in 1929 during the Salem County Fair in nearby Woodstown.

By 1955, it became a weekly Saturday night event, and it hasn’t missed a summer since. The Harris family still runs the operation, now five generations deep.

The 4,000-seat arena went up in 1967 and in 2023, the rodeo earned a spot in the ProRodeo Hall of Fame.

From late May through September, you can watch bull riding, bareback riding, barrel racing, steer wrestling and roping under the lights.

Swim in a lake that a sawmill created in 1796

Parvin State Park sits on the edge of the Pine Barrens in Pittsgrove Township, on the eastern side of the county.

The main lake here exists because Lemuel Parvin dammed a stream called Muddy Run in 1796 to power a sawmill. A smaller lake, Thundergust Lake, sits nearby.

The park falls in a transition zone between pine forest and hardwood forest, so the mix of plants and animals you’ll find is wider than most New Jersey parks.

You can swim, fish, boat, hike and camp at 56 tent and trailer sites or stay in one of 16 furnished cabins.

Follow 350 years of history along Market Street

Downtown Salem keeps its past right out in the open.

The streets are lined with buildings that go back centuries, many of them built with the same patterned brick craftsmanship the county is known for.

The Salem Friends Burial Ground, where the great Salem Oak once stood, is still a quiet place to stop. Saplings grown from the original tree’s acorns stand in the cemetery today.

Walk along Market Street, and you’ll pass historical markers that tell the stories of abolitionists, early settlers and local figures who helped shape the country.

Explore Salem County in Southern New Jersey

You can reach Salem County from Interstate 295 by taking exit 1C to County Route 551 south, then following signs to Route 49. Fort Mott State Park sits at 454 Fort Mott Road in Pennsville and is free to enter, with hours that vary by season.

Cowtown Rodeo runs Saturday nights from late May through September at 780 Harding Highway in Pilesgrove, with gates opening at 6 p.m. and the show starting at 7:30 p.m. Parvin State Park runs camping, swimming and cabin rentals from April through October.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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