Camp Adair
Camp Adair was a United States Army division training facility established north of Corvallis, Oregon, operating from 1942 to 1946. During its peak period of use, the camp was home to approximately 40,000 persons — enough to have constituted the second largest city in the state of Oregon. The camp was largely scrapped as government surplus following termination of World War II, with a portion of the site reconstituted as "Adair Air Force Station" in 1957.
Part of the former Camp Adair is now contained within the E. E. Wilson Wildlife Area, operated by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, with other parts of the camp now incorporated into the city of Adair Village.
History
Background
Planning for a United States Army cantonment in Oregon preceded the surprise bombing of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941. Six months earlier in June, with World War II already raging in Europe and the ranks of the American military swelling, several potential sites for Army camps in the Willamette Valley of western Oregon had been surveyed. Several locations in the vicinity of Eugene were ultimately rejected and a piece of land several miles north of Corvallis chosen, owing in large measure to the ready availability at a reasonable price of a large contiguous mass of relatively flat farmland with rolling hills, suitable for the Army's training needs. The site was tentatively tapped for development as a cantonment in August 1941, pending the authorization of construction funds.Establishment
The site was rapidly constructed in just six months following the Pearl Harbor attack. Further expansion followed, with the camp ultimately providing temporary quarters for 2,133 officers and 37,081 enlisted personnel.Camp Adair included about 1800 buildings, of which 500 were barracks, and maintained a hospital, a bakery, a post office, a bank, 13 post exchange stores, 5 movie theaters, and 11 chapels, among other structures. The explosion of population at the locale was so great during the wartime years that had the site of Camp Adair been incorporated, it would have constituted the second largest city in the state of Oregon. The size of the Army camp dwarfed the population of neighboring Corvallis, which stood at just under 8,400 in 1940.
Although the site was formally dedicated as "Camp Adair" on September 6, 1943, it was occupied by troops for many months prior to that date under the name "Corvallis Cantonment." The camp was named for Henry Rodney Adair, who was a native of Astoria and a member of a prominent Oregon pioneer family. After graduating from West Point, Adair became a cavalry lieutenant; he was killed in northern Mexico on June 21, 1916, at the Battle of Carrizal during the Pancho Villa Expedition.
End of use as training facility
By the end of July 1944 the 91st Infantry Division had been deployed and Camp Adair was abandoned as an Army training facility. The base hospital was enlarged to a capacity of 3600 patients and turned over to the United States Navy for treatment of sailors and marines wounded in the Pacific theater.The base was also repurposed as a prisoner-of-war camp and was used from August 1944 until July 1946 as a detention center for German and Italian POWs.
Termination
After the end of the war, most of the hurriedly constructed wartime structures at Camp Adair were declared government surplus and were sold at auction to demolition contractors, who dismantled the buildings and sold the lumber, windows, and other components for reuse elsewhere. Other buildings were transported intact to other sites and converted to civilian use.In 1957, Camp Adair became Adair Air Force Station and SAGE Support Facility, anticipating the construction of a CIM-10 Bomarc launch facility. Construction of the launch facility was not completed due to drastic reduction in the Bomarc program, but the infrastructure that was completed remains at the site. The SAGE facility operated until September 1969 and the station was soon closed.