Camp Detrick construction

Meanwhile, in 1942-3, the CWS constructed a BW facility at Camp Detrick (later renamed Fort Detrick), an army facility in Maryland, at a cost of 13 million. Operational in 1943, the facility at Camp Detrick employed approximately 4000 people. Other BW-related facilities included a 250-acre site near Dugway Proving Grounds (Utah) and a 2000 acre facility at Horn Island (Pascalouga, Mississippi), both of which were used for open-air testing. 

Through co-operation with the WRS, Dr. Baldwin secured the services of a formidable group of scientists and technicians. A site outside Frederick, Maryland, was selected for a biological warfare installation and construction of the future Camp Detrick was begun in the spring of 1943. This... 

Chittick and Joseph D. Sears. Actual construction of the camp, which came to occupy an area of more than five hundred acres, was not completed until June 1945. By then a small, self-contained city had been built containing more than 245 separate structures, including quarters for 5,000 workers. At the peak of operations in August 1945 there were at Camp Detrick 245 Army officers and 1,457 enlisted personnel, 87 Navy officers and 475 enlisted men, and 9 civilians, exclusive of civilian consultants. 

Horn Island, off the Mississippi coast, was selected as a field test site in early 1943, and construction got under way in June. No special structures, such as necessary at Camp Detrick, were required on the island aside from quarters for the test personnel and technical buildings adjacent to the grid area of the test site. The one unusual feature of the installation was an eight-mile narrow-gauge railroad which had to be constructed because building roads on the sandy island was not practicable. Track, locomotive, and wooden cars were shipped from Fort Benning, Georgia, and installed by a company of Seabees. 

By January 1944 the CWS had already begun operations at Camp Detrick and at the field test station on Horn Island in Mississippi Sound, and was constructing the Granite Peak test installation, adjacent to Dug-way Proving Ground, Utah, and the Vigo plant in Indiana. 

In April 1943, a little more than two weeks after the Army began construction at Detrick Field, Camp Detrick was formally activated. The Horn Island installation, with its 2,000 acres of sand dunes and scrub, began operations in October 1943. These were restricted to preliminary small-scale experiments because the island was only ten miles away from the mainland and because it was belatedly discovered that for two-thirds of the year the prevailing winds blew toward the mainland. 

In 1942 construction was also begun on two government-owned and privately operated plants and in 1943 on another five such plants. Besides the construction work done on arsenals and plants, the following major CWS facilities were erected in whole or part in 1942-43 Camp Sibert, Deseret Depot, Dugway Proving Ground, and Camp Detrick. In 1944, when War Department construction had been virtually completed, addi-... 

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