The Catalina Federal Honor Camp was built in 1939 to replace temporary prison camps supplying labor for construction of the Mt. Lemmon Highway, a shorter route from Tucson whose work had begun in 1933. Prisoners first worked with picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows, then with jackhammers, bulldozers, and tractors, and at this prison without fences or guard towers, where white rocks marked the boundary, they lived in wooden barracks near the creek, built rock walls, poured foundations for administration buildings and guards' quarters, and grew much of their own food at a farm near the base of the mountain. After the highway was completed, the site hosted youth rehabilitation camps until it closed in 1973, and most buildings were later removed. During World War II, Gordon Hirabayashi, a University of Washington senior, challenged the constitutionality of the curfew and relocation imposed on Japanese Americans, turned himself in to the F.B.I., was convicted, and asked for a sentence that would allow him to serve at an outdoor prison work camp. He hitchhiked to Tucson, after visiting his family interned in Idaho, and served at this camp. His case was reopened in 1987 after documents were found showing that the Justice Department had withheld evidence that the forced removal and internment of Japanese Americans was unnecessary, and his conviction was overturned; later, a federal commission concluded that the internment was driven by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and failed political leadership.