Friday marked the day 340 years ago when William Penn stepped onto the New World for the first time, in a place that would one day be known as the city of Chester, writes Anthony R. Wood for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

There’s a weather-beaten marker in a small park commemorating the spot near the intersection of Delaware River and Chester Creek.

The monument marks “the beginning of everything that America was to become,” said Carol Fireng, with the Chester Historical Preservation Committee.

Penn found the land “good, the air serene”.

He named the area “Chester,” after the city in Cheshire County, England, and proclaimed that with some work, the area would rival “the best-reputed places of Europe.”

William Penn imagined Chester as the capital of the Pennsylvania territory.

Independence Hall, the Constitutional Convention, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson all could have been part of the Chester scene and Elton John would be singing “this Chester Freedom.”

Unfortunately for Chester, Penn’s negotiations with the settlement’s largest landowner didn’t work out so he opted for Philadelphia as his metropolis, which also had the Schuylkill River as a better water source than Chester Creek,

Read more about Chester’s role in the nation’s beginning at The Philadelphia Inquirer.