Petty's Island in Camden, New Jersey

Off the coast of Philadelphia (or more accurately, Camden County, New Jersey), sitting in the Delaware river and heavily covered in trees and brush, is a deserted island. Once home to CITGO industrial operations, the island has been overgrown and uninhabited by human life for years. Usually, it’s off limits to visitors, but thanks to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the Center for Aquatic Sciences, a conservation easement allows the occasional group of visitors for educational purposes.

Cradled between two Urban centers, Petty’s Island is a beautiful greenspace made up of 500 acres of native flora and fauna. The island is home to eagles, hawks, white tailed deer, herons, and even coyotes. In the summer visitors can kayak through the island’s back channel or take a walking tour over its intermittent paths in pursuit of the variety of bat species that call the island home. It’s a perfectly balanced ecosystem, surrounded by mudflats that protect the island from incoming storms. At night you can see Philadelphia’s skyline towering brightly in the distance.

 The island has a long and storied history—first recorded as territory of the Lenni Lenape, later purchased by Quakers and (possibly) visited by notable figures such as Benjamin Franklin and Blackbeard (yes, the pirate). It was allegedly home to an illegal gambling operation, and a stop on the slave trade (some of these claims are less substantiated than others, we can hope with time and exposure the truth will be dug up). In its more recent years CITGO used it as a shipping and trucking exchange—transporting goods from massive ships to waiting trucks, only a single bridge between them and industrialized New Jersey. After ceasing operations, the island was left to its own devices, and nature took back its course. Today it looks like a post-apocalyptic utopia—the parking lots are overgrown, native birds have made nests atop inoperable telephone poles. Entire structures have turned into homes for bats or other curious critters. While inland it is green as far as your eyes can see, and on the edges, it is a rocky shoreline patterned by the footprints of deer (yes they can, and do, swim on and off the island).

 Community organizers are working tirelessly to secure the future of Petty’s Island; advocating for it to become a state park or environmental sanctuary for the many species that call it home and its human neighbors who cherish it for what it represents—the perseverance of the natural world.