This interchange contributes to regional commerce and was a major driver for business and retail development.

In 1754, Benjamin Davis received a license to keep an inn on Ridge Pike at Plymouth Creek.

During the Revolutionary War, in May 1778, the Plymouth Friends Meetinghouse served as a temporary military hospital.

General George Washington, then at Valley Forge, learned that a British force intended to seize the area and cut off movement of the Continental Army.

Lafayette instead took advantage of the Americans' knowledge of local roads, and escaped with minimal casualties.

The houses in this village are chiefly situated along the Perkiomen or Reading pike, nearly adjoining one another, and being of stone, neatly white washed, with shady yards in front, present to the stranger and agreeable appearance.

This is an ancient settlement, whose history dates back nearly to the arrival of William Penn, and is marked as a village on Lewis Evans' map of 1749.

The Maulsby and Corson families were early abolitionists, sheltering runaway slaves beginning in the 1810s and turning their properties into stations on the Underground Railroad.

Local resident George Corson was involved in hiding Jane Johnson, whose 1855 escape exposed a loophole in the federal law.

[8] When the doors to local churches and schools were closed to Abolitionist speakers, Corson built Abolition Hall (1856) on his farm at Germantown and Butler Pikes.

The hall could accommodate up to 200 people, and hosted speakers such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lucretia Mott, Mrs. Stephen Foster and William Lloyd Garrison.

[9] In the late 19th century, Abolition Hall became the art studio of painter Thomas Hovenden.

One of his most famous paintings,“Breaking Home Ties,” (shown below) as well as several others, can be seen in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Hovenden succeeded Thomas Eakins as the principal painting instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1886 after the latter was forced to resign for inappropriate use of nude models.

What is now Germantown Pike was ordered laid out by the Provincial Government in 1687 as a "cart road" from Philadelphia to Plymouth Meeting.

What is now Chemical Road, following Plymouth Creek, was opened in 1759 to provide access to a new gristmill.

In the beginning of the 19th century it was a training place for the 36th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Militia and the Second Battalion of Montgomery County.

The Plymouth Railroad was built in 1836 to serve some 20 lime kilns operating along the route between Conshohocken and Cold Point.

Rail service ended in the 1970s and the track-bed is now occupied by the multi-use (pedestrian and bicycle) Schuylkill River Trail.

The trolleys that ran on the shoulder of Germantown Pike connected Chestnut Hill and Norristown.

The trolley that ran from Norristown to Conshohocken through Black Horse, Seven Stars and Harmanville was replaced with buses in September 1933.

The Plymouth Meeting Historic District, Alan West Corson Homestead, Plymouth Friends Meetinghouse, and Hovenden House, Barn and Abolition Hall were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP has a total area of 3.8 square miles (9.8 km2), all land.

Boscov's, Burlington, Dick's Sporting Goods, Michaels, and Edge Fitness serve as the anchor stores to the mall.

The entire area is generally referred to as "Plymouth Whitemarsh", as is the high school.

La Salle University maintains a satellite campus in Plymouth Meeting.

The park has a walking trail, sand volleyball courts, indoor basketball and a swimming pool.

Colonial is regarded as one of the top school districts in the state with consistently high standardized testing results.

It was formed in 2012 by the merger of Epiphany of Our Lord School in Plymouth Meeting, Our Lady of Victory in East Norriton Township, and St. Titus in Norristown.