Prior to the city's expansion, it was a separate port town located 14 miles (23 km) down the Huangpu River from Shanghai's urban core.

As a result of an American railroader visiting the area in his sea captain days, it would also become the namesake for an unincorporated community in southwestern Ogle County, Illinois, northwest of Dixon.

[citation needed] By 1900, it boasted a lighthouse and a "skeleton" teahouse, as well as a small squadron of war-junks (ty-mung) of the Imperial Chinese Navy.

[3][4][5] Wusong was later the site of an internment camp for marines captured on Wake Island after the attack on Pearl Harbor over four years later.

The Wusung Radio Mast was built in the 1930s and was at the time of inauguration the world's second-tallest architectural structure after the Empire State Building.