Camden

Industrial city and port in southwestern New Jersey, USA, on the left bank of Delaware River opposite Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; seat of Camden County; population (1992 est) 86,900, of which 54% are African-American, 24% Hispanic, and 20% white. The city is linked with Philadelphia by the Benjamin Franklin Bridge (1926), and is a manufacturing and trade centre; its main industries include electronics and food-processing. In 1994, Camden port became part of the Port of Philadelphia and Camden.

Camden was first settled in 1681 and laid out in 1773; it was incorporated as a city in 1828. The Campbells Soup Company factory opened here in 1862. Camden is the seat of a branch of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (1927). Walt Whitman House, where the poet lived from 1873-92, is now a museum. It was announced in 2000 that Camden will become the final home of the USS New Jersey, a battleship built at the nearby Philedelphia Naval Yard in 1942.