Wilt Chamberlain's Scoring Record
Derry Township, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
In a basketball game played here on March 2, 1962, Philadelphia Warriors center Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points against the New York Knicks-- a record for points scored by a single player in any National Basketball Association game, 169-147, in front of 4,124 fans. During that season, Chamberlain set other records by averaging 50.4 points per game and by scoring more than 50 points in each of 45 games.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
On the night of March 2, 1962, in a game played in Hershey, Philadelphia Warriors center Wilt Chamberlain did something no one has matched: he scored 100 points in a single NBA game, leading his team past the New York Knicks 169–147 before a modest crowd of 4,124. It capped a season of staggering dominance in which Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points a game and topped 50 points on 45 separate nights.
Why it matters
Chamberlain's 100-point game remains one of the most unbreakable records in American sports, a benchmark of individual achievement that still defines basketball greatness.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Wilt Chamberlain
Related events
- · Chamberlain's 100-point game
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Lincoln Cemetery
Progress, PA · est. 1994
Founded in 1827 by the Wesley Union A.M.E. Zion Church, this cemetery became a resting place for central Pennsylvania's Black community across generations. Among its graves are those of journalist and Civil War officer T. Morris Chester, educator and abolitionist William Howard Day, and more than twenty Civil War veterans. Each headstone marks a life that helped build free Black institutions in the decades around emancipation.
William Howard Day
Swatara Township, PA · est. 1997
Born free in New York, the man honored here devoted his life to the fight against slavery, lecturing across the United States, Canada, and Britain on behalf of the enslaved and free Black communities. After the Civil War he settled in Harrisburg, edited a newspaper, and served as a leader in the A.M.E. Zion Church. In 1878 he broke a barrier by becoming the first African American elected to the city's school board, later serving as its president.
U.S. Colored Troops Grand Review
Harrisburg, PA · est. 2006
When the great "Grand Review of the Armies" paraded through Washington in May 1865, the United States Colored Troops who had fought and bled for the Union were pointedly left out. In answer, Black regiments from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts assembled here at State and Filbert Streets on November 14, 1865, for their own triumphant review. Grand Marshal T. Morris Chester led them through Harrisburg to Senator Simon Cameron's home, where leaders including Octavius Catto and William Howard Day honored their service.
T. Morris Chester
Harrisburg, PA · est. 1986
Born in Harrisburg in 1834, T. Morris Chester lived a life that ranged across three continents. He taught in Liberia, recruited Black soldiers for the Union, and reported from the front as one of the only African American war correspondents of the Civil War. Afterward he raised aid for the freedpeople in Europe, was admitted to the English bar, and held prominent offices in Reconstruction-era Louisiana before returning home to die in 1892.