Book excerpt: From its founding by Colonial ironworker John Potts through its heyday as a manufacturing hub in the 20th century, Pottstown has been defined by entrepreneurs, inventors, and hard-working immigrants with dreams of a better life. It has been home to a variety of churches, community organizations, and businesses that have sustained and entertained residents and visitors for more than 260 years. It has also produced its fair share of musicians, doctors, nurses, and professional athletes, like Dick Ricketts, the first pick in the 1955 NBA draft. Pottstown is a culinary capital in its own right as the place where Amanda Smith started Mrs. Smith's pies, and where Dan Brunish sells his famous sausage sandwiches out of the deli started by his grandparents in 1937. Today, with the vision of people like Marta Kiesling and Deborah Stimson-Snow, cofounders of Steel River Playhouse, and Dr. Karen Stout, president of Montgomery County Community College, Pottstown is reinventing itself as a center for art, technology, higher education, and recreation on the Schuylkill River in southeastern Pennsylvania.