Greenwich was the principal colonial settlement of Cumberland County and one of New Jersey’s first official ports-of-entry under British rule. Although Dutch and Swedish settlers were the first Europeans to explore the region, English settlers shaped Greenwich’s primary character and its role in the creation of a new nation. John Fenwick founded Greenwich in 1675, and Ye Greate Street was laid out by 1684. For thousands of years before Europeans arrived, the area supported large settlements of Native American Lenni-Lenape people; colonization had dire effects on their culture, though descendants of the Lenape still live throughout the region today and their heritage is preserved in several public collections. A best-known 18th century event was the Greenwich Tea Burning of 1774, one of the five major tea incidents in pre-Revolutionary America. In the 19th century, Greenwich also played a critical role in the Underground Railroad, with the crossing from Delaware to Greenwich and the road north through Springtown serving as a favored route of Harriet Tubman and many others. Greenwich was also a major 18th- and 19th-century Delaware Bay shipbuilding town and a center of the region’s fishing, oystering, and sturgeon industry. Railroad lines ran to Greenwich Piers on the Cohansey River to pick up sturgeon, sturgeon roe, shad, and oysters, and a station on Ye Greate Street stood next to a large tomato cannery that served as the main shipping point for fruit and produce. This history and heritage remain evident in Greenwich’s architecture, farmlands, and preserved landscapes, and in 1995 the PSEG Estuary Enhancement Program placed more than 4,400 acres known as the Bayside Tract under deed of conservation restriction, protecting coastal wetlands and uplands that provide habitat for fish, mammals, migratory waterfowl, shorebirds, and protected bird species including the northern harrier and bald eagle while also allowing continued agricultural activities.