Fort Ord

By Harold E. Raugh Jr.

From its establishment during World War I to its closure at the end of the Cold War, the Army installation best known as Fort Ord made a significant contribution to our national defense. Founded as a training area for Presidio of Monterey troops in 1917, Fort Ord covered more than 28,000 acres near the city of Monterey in its heyday. The local topography made it ideal as an infantry training center, and this was its primary mission throughout much of the 20th century. Most recently, Fort Ord was home to the 7th Infantry Division (Light), which was inactivated in 1993. In September 1994, Fort Ord closed its gates and became a part of military history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Mar 17, 2004
• ISBN: 9781439614204

Harold E. Raugh Jr.

Author Harold E. Raugh, Jr., is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel of infantry who served twice at Fort Ord while on active duty. A prominent military historian, he is now the Command Historian of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center and Presidio of Monterey, and used its archives and others in preparing this book. Dr. Raugh presents more than 200 historic photographs to tell the unique story of Fort Ord and the men and women who built its enduring legacy.

Book preview

(Ret.)

INTRODUCTION

The U.S. Army installation best known as Fort Ord, California, from its establishment in 1917 during World War I to its closure in 1994 after the end of the Cold War, made a significant contribution to the defense of the United States.

On August 4, 1917, the U.S. War Department purchased 15,609.5 acres of land from the David Jacks Corporation to be used as a training area and firing range for the infantry, cavalry, and field artillery units stationed at the Presidio of Monterey. This included one large parcel of 15,409.5 acres and a smaller area of 200 acres next to Jacks’ railroad siding. This acquisition, today known as the East Garrison area, was then called Gigling Reservation, named after a German immigrant family that had lived on the land.

Army units at the Presidio of Monterey organized several Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps in the area in 1933, including one on Gigling Reservation. The training area was also used by units from the Presidio of San Francisco, the California Army National Guard, the Citizens Military Training Corps, and the Reserve Officer Training Corps. These units frequently bivouacked in a section of Gigling Reservation called Camp Huffman, located west of Merrillis Hill.

--Also in 1933, the Army renamed Gigling Reservation Camp Ord after Maj. Gen. E.O.C. Ord (1818–1883), a prominent Civil War commander who had first arrived in Monterey in January 1847 as a lieutenant in Company F, 3rd Artillery. In 1938, the Army built permanent buildings and facilities on the bluffs overlooking Salinas that later became known as East Garrison.

The Army began to prepare for war in 1939 by selecting sites for training a proposed conscript army. Monterey Bay seemed to be vulnerable to an enemy invasion, and in early 1940, the Fourth Army conducted in the Monterey Bay area the first major joint Army-Navy operation on the West Coast since World War I.

In 1940, the Army bought an additional 3,777 acres of land located between Marina and the existing Camp Ord. Later that same year, an additional 2,000 acres east of Highway 1 and north of Seaside to the Gigling railroad spurs were purchased. Also in 1940, residents of the Salinas and Monterey areas bought a 276.4-acre parcel of land south of Marina and west of the railroad line and donated it to the Army. The latter became the beach rifle ranges.

Construction began on the new installation in 1940. The portion of the garrison located near the coast was temporarily named Camp Clayton, and another part of the camp was named Camp Pacific. On August 15, 1940, Camps Ord, Huffman, Clayton, and Pacific were combined and redesignated Fort Ord, which became a permanent Army installation.

Fort Ord was built in 1940–1941 at a cost of $12 million, the largest single construction project ever undertaken in the Monterey Bay area. Within months, the infrastructure of a medium-sized town, with roads and railroad sidings, water and sewer lines, power and telephone lines, and hundreds of temporary wooden mobilization buildings, was completed. By January 1942, Fort Ord consisted of 28, 514 acres.

The 7th Infantry Division (7ID), which had been initially constituted on December 6, 1917 at Camp Wheeler, Georgia, participated in combat operations in Europe in World War I, and was inactivated on September 22, 1921 at Camp Meade, Maryland. For service in World War II, the 7ID was reactivated on July 1, 1940 at Camp Ord, California,