Severely overgrown through decades of neglect and hidden behind the Super Walmart along the Big Timber Creek in Deptford is the old Chestnut Oak, where Jean Pierre Blanchard landed in 1793 during the nation’s first-ever manned balloon flight in 1793. It is almost impossible to scan the QR code denoting the site because it is so dirty, and the entire site will take lots of work to clean it up for the 250th anniversary of the nation on July 4, 2026.
In 1793 Jean Pierre Blanchard launched his hot air balloon from Philadelphia, crossed the Delaware River, and landed by the Old Clement Oak in Deptford Township during the nation’s first-ever manned aviation flight.
Yet, as the United States gets ready to celebrate in 250th anniversary, the site marking his historic flight is hard to find and in complete disarray. However, the Gloucester County Historical Society is determined to clean it up and make it more accessible to the public with help from various organizations.
“The production company tasked with putting together the 52 Weeks of Firsts, the Philadelphia Historic District and visitors organizations chosen platform to celebrate the 250 anniversary of our nation, will be adding on their map of places to visit Blanchard’s landing site in Deptford,” said Debbie Harding, past president of the Aero Club of Pennsylvania and owner/operator of Air Ventures Hot Balloon Flights, Inc., PA.
The difficulty will be to clean up the site in time for the hundreds of thousands of visitors expected in Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley next year as part of the celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
“If you ask most school children and probably most adults where aviation history begin in the United States, their answer is ‘The Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903,’” said historian Hoag Levins, who is the Publications Committee chairperson for the Historical Society.
“But the community of modern-day air balloonists across the country are keenly aware that the accurate answer to that question is actually ‘Jean Pierre Blanchard, Philadelphia to Deptford, 1793.’ And that’s why the nation’s balloonists feel so strongly about this site and why they played such a major role in the 1993 200th Anniversary celebration of Blanchard Balloon flight landing site,” Levin said.
The First Flight site in Deptford also commemorates the Clement Oak tree that was more than 400 years old when destroyed by a storm five years ago, is overgrown with weeds and inaccessible to the public.
It is located behind a six-foot high fence behind the Walmart at 2000 Clements Bridge Road, and a person would have to sneak through a hole in the fence and walk 50 yards in heavy brush to find it.
“It’s like a jungle back there. The jungle has reclaimed it,” Levins said, adding that the Society’s mandate is to advocate for the preservation of local historic sites. He would like to see it cleaned up, refurbished, and easily accessed by visitors.
When the Walmart Supercenter was built in 2008, it had agreed to maintain the First Flight and Clement Oak site. “Walmart did do that for some years but in recent years – I estimate that to be about five years ago – it stopped maintaining the site,” Levins said.
In an interview with the Gloucester County Historical Society, Deptford Mayor Paul Medany explained, “During the original approval process for the Walmart Supercenter the applicant agreed to maintain the property. For several years after opening that didin fact happen. That has certainly not occurred in recent years.
“We do not have the municipal funds to maintain this area and we are going to contact the current management to encourage them to adhere to the original approval and return to maintaining this most historic property,” Medany said.
“As the country approaches its 250th anniversary, should we abandon and forget the physical historic site that was the 1793 landing spot of the nation’s first manned balloon flight?” asked Levins, who is spearheading the efforts to address the situation.
“It really could be a cool and unique opportunity for Walmart to show community support,” Harding said. “They have grant money available for such things, not in the way of individual payment of wages but certainly could provide, water, lunch for the clean-up crew as well as the necessary shovels, rakes, pruners, chainsaws wheel barrows and dumpster space, while getting a good name for themselves back in the community.”
In a 1993 celebration of the 200th anniversary of the balloon landing, Deptford joined with the First Air Voyage in America (FAVIA 200 Inc.), an organization of ballooning enthusiasts based in Scranton, PA., to rededicate the historic landing site, Levins said.
They installed a large bronze marker that reads: “This plaque rededicates the landing site of Jean Pierre Blanchard’s ascension from Philadelphia, on this the 200th anniversary of The First Air Voyage in America.”
When Benjamin Franklin witnessed the first air balloon voyage while in France in 1783, he was asked “What good is a balloon” He answered “What good is a new born baby.”
Harding said that Franklin saw the value immediately not just in traveling by air, but also observation by air for military reasons and observation of the world of air as in weather and space exploration. “This was the infancy of a whole new world of possibilities and discoveries.”
Ten years later, on Jan. 9, 1793, both Benjamin Franklin and President George Washington attended the first air voyage in America at the then capital of the United States in Philadelphia, she said. Blanchard launched from a yard of the Walnut Street prison, where the Penn Mutual Life insurance building now stands.
President Washington provided Blanchard with a “letter of passage” asking whoever he should meet upon landing that they fear not and offer support to reunite the pilot to his quarters where he started from in Philly, also marking the first air mail, Harding said.
“Historians have pointed out that the 1793 flight was not just a spectacle,” Levins said. “Blanchard performed measurements (altitude, pulse, air samples, and magnetism) during flight, underscoring the scientific curiosity of the era.
“The presence of figures such as President Washington and other top government officials at the scene in what was then the nation’s capital lent both legitimacy and visibility to scientific discovery, connecting ballooning with national pride, innovation, and public imagination in the newly established United States,” Levins said.
