Welcome to Hamilton Township — just not the one I grew up in

It was the fall of 1980, and I was driving to Princeton for a job interview at WPST, NJ 101.5's sister station. Funny enough, I sit across the hall from the WPST folks to this day. Back then, I-295 ended in Burlington County, so there was no easy way around it. I had to take Route 206 all the way up from Hammonton, right through the heart of the Pine Barrens, into the farmland of Burlington County, through that strange merge where 206 and 130 come together in Bordentown, and on toward the traffic circle where 206 meets White Horse.

And then I saw it. A green highway sign: Welcome to Hamilton Township.

I grew up in Hamilton Township, Atlantic County. Mays Landing is part of it. I had never once considered that there might be another one. But there it was, a whole different Hamilton Township, this one wrapped around Trenton in Mercer County, more than sixty miles from the one I called home.

Eighteen years old, alone on the road, nervous about an interview that could change my life — and somehow, seeing that sign made me feel a little bit at home, even though it wasn't my home at all. There is something comforting about a familiar word showing up in an unfamiliar place, even when it is only borrowing the name.

That was the first time it hit me that New Jersey might have more than one town sharing the same name. It turns out there are a lot of them, including the town I was driving to that very day.

Two Hamiltons, one confused state

Hamilton Township, Mercer County was incorporated in 1842, named for Hamilton Square and, by extension, Alexander Hamilton. It is one of the largest municipalities in the state, a world away from the Hamilton Township I grew up in, which sits quietly in Atlantic County around Mays Landing. Locals in my hometown have been living with this mix-up for generations. People confuse the two constantly. Mail gets misrouted. GPS units send people three hours in the wrong direction. There is even a third Hamilton, a small place up in Monmouth County, just to round things out.

New Jersey has 565 municipalities packed into one of the smallest states in the country, and early settlers had a habit of naming new towns after the same handful of revered historical figures. Nobody coordinated any of it. The result, centuries later, is a genuinely confusing map.

SEE ALSO: NJ has so many municipalities — 75 of them share the same name — the complete list 

Hamilton Township Mercer County Municipal Building | Google Maps

The Founding Fathers won, over and over

Washington leads the pack by a wide margin. There are six separate places in New Jersey named Washington — a borough in Warren County, and township versions in Warren, Gloucester, Morris, Bergen and Burlington counties. One of those Washington Townships, in Mercer County, got tired of the confusion and renamed itself Robbinsville back in 2007.

Franklin is close behind with five — a borough in Sussex County and townships in Somerset, Gloucester, Hunterdon and Warren. Franklin Lakes up in Bergen County is not named for Ben Franklin at all, but for his estranged son William, New Jersey's last colonial governor. Greenwich shows up three times, in Warren, Gloucester and Cumberland counties. Hopewell appears three times as well, split between a borough and township in Mercer and a separate township down in Cumberland.

When it's the same county doing the confusing

Not every duplicate crosses county lines the way the two Hamiltons do. Some counties simply named two of their own municipalities the same thing, which might be even more confusing up close. Hunterdon County has both the Town of Clinton and Clinton Township, sitting right next to each other, sharing a name and a border but functioning as two entirely separate governments. Morris County does the same thing with Boonton — the Town of Boonton and Boonton Township, distinct municipalities occupying the same small corner of the map. Sussex County has Andover Borough and Andover Township, another same-county pair that trips up mail carriers and pizza delivery drivers alike.

Monmouth County joins the club too, with Freehold Borough and Freehold Township existing right next to each other as entirely separate towns, each with its own government, its own police department, its own identity, despite sharing a name and a border.

And then there is Egg Harbor, which somehow manages to confuse people three different ways. Atlantic County has both Egg Harbor Township and Egg Harbor City, distinct municipalities a short drive apart. Then, just over the county line in Ocean County, there is Little Egg Harbor Township, close enough in name and geography to complete the trifecta. Three Egg Harbors, two counties, and a whole lot of confused GPS units trying to sort it all out.

The town I was driving to had the same problem

Here is the detail that gets me most, looking back. Princeton, the very town I was driving to that day, had the exact same issue. Princeton Borough and Princeton Township were two separate municipalities back in 1980, sharing a name, a downtown, and a very confusing set of overlapping borders — the township famously wrapped around the borough like a doughnut, with Princeton University itself straddling the line between the two. It took four failed attempts across nearly sixty years before voters finally approved consolidation in 2011, merging into one single Princeton on January 1, 2013.

So on the very day I discovered New Jersey's duplicate-name problem for the first time, I was driving directly into another example of it, without even knowing.

Why it still gets me

WPST actually offered me that job back in 1980. I turned it down. I was not ready to leave my Hamilton yet — not the township, exactly, but everything it meant. Home. Familiar roads. A life I was not finished living in South Jersey. I did not take the job until 1982, two years later, when the timing and I were both finally ready.

Forty-six years after that first drive up Route 206, I still think about that green sign. An eighteen-year-old kid from Mays Landing, heading north for an interview that would eventually change his life, and somewhere along the way, the state played a small trick on him. Welcome to Hamilton Township. Just not his, not yet. But close enough, that day, to feel like it.