Camp Kilmer was the first Army camp built specifically to stage Army personnel to and from the New York Port of Embarkation. Chosen in 1941 at Stelton in Raritan Township, now Edison Township, New Jersey, from twenty-two possible sites because it best met military requirements as war threatened the United States, the 1,573-acre tract was purchased in 1942 and named for Sergeant Alfred Joyce Kilmer. Built in a little more than four months at a cost of over $37 million by a civilian workforce of more than 11,000, the camp grew into a vast temporary military center with barracks, mess halls, theaters, chapels, exchanges, libraries, telephone centers, fire stations, a hospital, warehouses, roads, railheads, athletic and service facilities, and later an amphitheater, stadium, stockade, and training landship. It could move as many as 58,000 soldiers in a twenty-four-hour period, process up to 50,000 people in a week, and served Army Air Forces, Army Ground Forces, and Army Service Forces, while more than twenty infantry and armored divisions passed through on their way to the European Theater of Operation during World War II. The camp also housed German and Italian prisoners of war, including some Italian cooperators after Italy surrendered, and approximately five million men and women passed through during World War II and the postwar period before its temporary closure in 1949. Reopened from 1950 to 1953 because of the Korean Conflict and reactivated again in 1956 for about seven months to house Hungarian Freedom Fighters after the Hungarian Uprising, it later remained partly in Army use while much of the original property passed to institutions, public facilities, businesses, and homes. Before the camp existed, the land had belonged to many families and businesses, with some tracts settled as early as the 1660s, including 148½ acres held by John Smalley and his family for 241 years; the Smalley family helped found the Stelton Baptist Church, and their burial plot was preserved and still survives.