Camp Ellis #3: There Be Water Traditional Cache

The cache is located along Rifle Range Road. This is one of the few original 'street' at the former WWII US Army Camp Ellis. Close by you will see one of the 2 water towers build for the camp. Not much of the old camp remains and most of it is located on private property.

Camp Ellis Cache #3

There be Water - Lots of water.

Camp Ellis Cache #3 Makes reference to the 700,000 gallons of purified Spoon River water that the camp used daily which came through the two giant, bomb-proof water storage towers that still remain.

Rifle Range Road is one of the few original 'streets' of the Encampment itself. (The camp had 21 "north/south" streets, and 47 "east/west" streets.) The 2,200 camp buildings occupied the area south of this road for a distance of 2.5 miles. Between the ranges of barracks was the Parade Grounds where most of the special function facilities were located -- the service clubs, recreation halls, gymnasiums, libraries, a number of the chapels and movie theaters, and the outdoor amphitheater. Within the encampment were separate areas for the Quartermaster, Signal Corps, Engineers, and Medical Service units to live and train. All that can be seen here today are traces of some of the original gravel roads. Along roads throughout the camp are piles of rubble -- bricks and concrete -- later bulldozed out of fields so that crops could be planted.

Camp Ellis Info:

On September 17, 1942, life in part of central Illinois was about to change. What was once endless cornfields and farm land was about to become a busy military city. It was built in the area of Table Grove, Illinois, and occupied 17,750 acres. Farmers were given just thirty days to vacate their farms, taking with them whatever they could haul away in that short period of time. Sealed bids were taken on crops left in the field, and it was the farmers' responsibility to harvest them before the huge construction machines moved in.

The area was to become the largest army camp under construction. It took only six months to construct this military city although bad weather and wartime material shortages hampered their efforts.

Upon completing construction the Army had erected thousands of buildings. On April 15, 1943, the gates opened to Camp Ellis, named in honor of Sergeant Michael B. Ellis whose heroics during World War I ranked him as a hero. The facility was originally designated as the Camp Ellis Interment Camp, but on August 31, 1943, its name was changed to the Camp Ellis, Illinois, Prisoner of War Camp. During the time Camp Ellis operated, 125,000 men were trained, and nearly 5,000 POWs were housed.

Training at Camp Ellis reached its peak in June 1944; during this time, it sent units to the European and Pacific theaters. The engineer group stationed at Camp Ellis was disbanded in January 1945 and training that was conducted at the base by other units ended soon thereafter. The camp remained open, however, and its primary mission was changed to guarding the POWs. Some of the land that made up Camp Ellis was leased back to the local farmers as early as 1945. The camp was declared surplus in October 1945.

In April 1946, the War Department decided to keep Camp Ellis open as an Army Ground Forces training center. The Army National Guard used about 850 acres of the camp from 1946 until 1950 for equipment storage and small arms training. Only small arms were fired at Camp Ellis during the period that the Army National Guard used the camp.

In the early 1950s, the Air Force used parts of the camp for survival training. Between 1954 and 1955, the General Services Administration (GSA) sold the property at auction back to private landowners. The installation was used for numerous types of weapons and munitions training operations.

* Historical information from a story by Brian Parks, Macomb Junior-Senior High School West, Macomb, & the US Army Corps of Engineers

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Historical text and Postcard provided by:

http://www.illinoisancestors.org/fulton/camp_ellis/camp_ellis.html