In July 1917, the landscape of New Jersey and the nation was undergoing major changes both physically and politically. In order to train the 1 million-man army needed to fight in the trenches of France, the U.S. government had authorized the building of 16 cantonments across the country. One of these was carved out of the rich farmland near the borders of Ocean and Burlington counties near Wrightstown, N.J.

Roger Batchelder wrote in the official history, “(F)few people of the outside world, or even of New Jersey itself, had…