After the New Jersey Department of Transportation began construction on a 7.2 mile stretch of Route 55 in 1983, the following things occurred: One construction worker was run over by an asphalt roller truck; another was blown off a bridge overpass; one inspector died on the job
of a brain aneurysm; one worker's feet mysteriously blackened;; one worker's wife miscarried; a van carrying five workers burned and exploded; one worker's parents were killed in an auto accident the night after the project began; the brother and father of one worker died on the same weekend. Carl Pierce, chief of the Delaware tribe,
said that the construction desecrated an ancient burial ground.