It Happened in Hillsborough: The Hillsborough Family Fall Out Shelter

If you’re not old enough to remember hiding under your desk at school during a “duck and cover” drill, you might not fully grasp the fear and paranoia that gripped the nation during the Cold War Years. Today, with the benefit of eight full decades of nuclear restraint behind us, there is a certain sense of security. But in the 1950s and 60s there was no telling if tensions between the world powers would erupt into World War III. In any case, at least one family in Hillsborough Township was ready!

The Hillsborough Family Fallout Shelter

When entrepreneur Richard Burr was looking for a secure Hillsborough, NJ, location for his document storage business, Vital Records, Inc., in 1980, he chanced upon a site on New Center Road that proved perfect.

What Burr found in a "for sale" ad in the Courier News was the below-ground facility built by AT&T in 1970 as an "underground communication transmission installation" - one of many throughout the U.S. - from which the telephone giant hoped to keep long-distance lines operational after a nuclear attack. Burr described the structure as "designed to withstand everything except a direct hit."

AT&T was a bit late to the game. The idea of using a fallout shelter - a reinforced concrete structure, often underground, where people could survive the radiation that would accompany an atomic bomb - was first promulgated in the 1950s, and then conceived of for residential applications in the early 1960s. In fact, if Vital Records, Inc. ever runs out of space on New Center Rd., they may be able to find some on Claremont Drive!

By the late 1950s, with the Cold War heating up and fear of an atomic attack growing, the federal government distributed information on how citizens could build their own shelters. If you didn't want to build it yourself, there was no shortage of contractors who would do it for you.

Claremont Developers, Inc. of Manville took it one step further with the next phase of their Hillsborough development off of Millstone River Road. One of the options offered on Claremont Drive was a complete "Civil Defense Approved" fallout shelter under the garage. The 22-by-14-foot space could accommodate 20 people if necessary, but was set up for a family of four, with a bunk bed, a chemical toilet, and a two-week supply of food included in the purchase price.

Claremont built at least one shelter in the model home on Claremont Drive and held an open house in November 1961, complete with an appearance by Mrs. New Jersey!

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Gregory Gillette has been writing about local history for 20 years, starting with his Courier News column “Gillette on Hillsborough” and continuing today with a Facebook page of the same name. A recipient of the Somerset County Cultural and Heritage Commission History Award for Education/Leadership in 2018, he was named as Hillsborough’s first Local Historian in 2025.