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Pine Camp
Description: Pine Camp: In 1907 the Black River Great bend area was first used by the NY Guard for summer maneuvers as Camp Hughes. In 1908, Brigadier General Frederick Dent Grant, son of General Ulysses S. Grant, was sent there with 2,000 regulars and 8,000 militia. He found Pine Plains to be an ideal place to train troops. The following year money was allocated to purchase the land and summer training continued there through the years. With the outbreak of WWII, the area then known as Pine Camp was selected for a major expansion and an additional 75,000 acres of land was purchased. By Labor Day 1941, 100 tracts of land were taken over. Contractors then went to work, and in a period of 10 months at a cost of $20 million, an entire city was built to house the divisions scheduled to train here. Eight hundred buildings were constructed; 240 barracks, 84 mess halls, 86 storehouses, 58 warehouses, 27 officers' quarters, 22 headquarters buildings, and 99 recreational buildings as well as guardhouses and a hospital. The three divisions to train at Pine Camp were General George S. Patton's 4th Armored Division (Gen. Creighton Abrams was a battalion commander here at the time), the 45th Infantry Division and the 5th Armored Division. The post also served as a prisoner of war camp. Pine Camp became Camp Drum in 1951.
See Fort Drum and Camp Drum for continuation.
For more information see www.drum.army.mil/sites/about/history.asp
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Pine Camp, Great Bend 1932
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New Pine Camp, 1941
County: Jefferson County
City, State: Fort Drum, New York

