By Kenneth Chrusz & Richard D. Smith for The Montgomery News | October 6, 2026
Having prisoners perform labor as part of fulfilling their debts to society is an ancient — and controversial — practice. A noteworthy example occurred right here in the Montgomery/Rocky Hill area in the early 20th century.
As the horse-and-wagon era was clip-clopping its last and the automobile age was revving up, it was clear that several state roads required major maintenance, even rebuilding and realignments. That included the road now known as Route 206, starting from its intersection with Witherspoon Street in Princeton through Montgomery and then north to Somerville.
A plan was devised which, its proponents said, would result in beneficial public works and provide inmates with healthy labor outside prison walls. It also would save taxpayers money by reducing expensive contract work by private vendors.
What followed involved major successes but also tragedy.
The concept of road crew camps — at which inmates would be quartered near the sites of major projects — was first realized with what was officially known as State Camp No. 1 Andover in Sussex County.
State Camp No. 2 Rocky Hill followed, focusing on the Rt. 206 project. The camp was erected on former farmland rented to the state by the Douglass family. Although referred to in state correspondence and newspaper coverage as the Rocky Hill camp, it was physically located in Montgomery Township on the eastern side of Princeton Avenue and Mount Lucas Road.
A major plus for locating this road work camp in Montgomery/Rocky Hill was proximity to the Trap Rock Quarry near Kingston, which could provide crushed stone for the road beds.
The camp was dominated by a large single-story barracks-style dormitory, with an outlying cookhouse and other support structures. It officially opened in the week of August 5, 1913. But so pressing was the need for work on Rt. 206, especially during warm weather, that the inmate crews workers were already being driven from and returned each day to the NJ State Prison in Trenton.
Not surprisingly, the camp had evoked skepticism and even outright opposition during its planning stages.
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Under the headline “Rocky Hill Fears the Convict Camp,” the July 13, 1913, New Brunswick Daily Home News, reported that local farmers worried “the county will be overrun with state prison convicts … and the keepers will be unable to prevent them from escaping.”
Such concerns were not misplaced. Newspaper articles document the camp’s steady — even rapid — growth. The Plainfield Courier News of July 18, 1914, reported 40 prisoners at Rocky Hill. A subsequent article reported a population increase of 36 more inmates, en route to the final 120 commonly quoted thereafter. Yet the number of guards was not significantly increased, hovering around four or six.
The Camden Daily Courier of October 15, 1914, acknowledged that the initiative to saved money, and did “give more freedom, air, and sunshine to a portion of the inmate population; to lessen the prison population; and improve the roads had proved quite successful.” But the Courier also noted that over a year’s time, a total of 26 inmates had escaped from the Andover and Rocky Hill camps plus a prison farm in Cumberland County.
Proponents of the camps had believed — or perhaps hoped — that inmates wouldn’t risk losing desirable outside work assignments and having additional time put on their sentences by escape attempts. But the escapee problem couldn’t be ignored.
On Sunday October 4, 1914, three inmates ran off from the Rocky Hill camp, according to the newspapers of the day. The guards who went in pursuit took some of the other convicts to aid in running them down.
The Liberty Plainfield Courier News of October 8, 1914, reported — under the arresting headline “Convicts Escaping from State Highway Jobs” — that only six guards were assigned to overseeing 110 prisoners at Rocky Hill. And factoring in time off for the guards, only four were on duty on any given day.
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Despite being touted as a money saver, it had become was clear the nascent camp and farms system was being starved of crucial operating funds. Camp proponents blamed the legislature for not approving the necessary funding for security. “We are doing the best we can under the law,” said Jacob Shurts of Somerville, president of the State Prison Board of Inspection, in The Liberty Plainfield Courier News.
A tragedy abetted by understaffing seemed inevitable.
On May 2, 1915, at the Rocky Hill Camp, an argument erupted between Alonzo Williams, 24, of Union County, and Benjamin Wooley, 36, of Long Branch. After the game, Williams managed to carry a bat back to the dormitory, where he struck Wooley, severely fracturing his skull.
Wooley was driven to Trenton State Prison for emergency surgery, but his injuries proved fatal. The Asbury Park Evening Press reported: “Wooley ... was considered a model prisoner,” and was trusted to operate the steam roller during road projects.
Williams was tried for murder, found guilty and sentenced to die in the electric chair. But his lawyer succeeded in securing a retrial on procedural grounds. Williams plead no contest to his crime and his sentence was commuted a lengthy period of imprisonment.
The press reported that Williams was remorseful, saying, “I am very sorry I did it; I didn’t mean to do it.”
The murder at the Rocky Hill work camp was so notorious that when Williams was transferred from the prison to a state mental illness asylum in Septembers 1923, it received prominent national newspaper coverage.
By the early 1930s, New Jersey's prisoner road work camps were largely phased out and closed due to shifting state labor laws, economic pressures of the Great Depression, and legislative restrictions placed on convict labor competing with free public workers. The La Guardia Amendment of 1932 prohibited state road programs from receiving federal funding if inmate labor was used.
During the massive unemployment of the Depression, law abiding citizens — much more than low-paid or unpaid prisoners — needed the work that government infrastructure programs could provide. ■
