Camp Adair
In August, 1941, the U.S. Army announced plans to locate a military training camp in north Benton County. Months later, on December 12, five days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the military established Camp Adair to accommodate 33,000 men. The presence the camp transformed family farms to an army post of 1,800 buildings within six months and encompassed much of the surrounding
land. In order to build Camp Adair, the military demolished the former town of Wells, that included a school, railroad depot, church, several businesses, and houses. The cantonment with the necessary support personnel transformed 50,000 acres of family farms into Oregon’s second largest city. Families were uprooted, cemeteries relocated, railroad tracks rerouted, and schools consolidated. Camp Adair was not enclosed with a permanent fence, instead, guards on horseback patrolled ammunition depots and the Camp perimeter. The Cantonment is named for Henry Rodney Adair, A West Point graduate, Oregon pioneer descendant, and the first Oregonian killed in the 1916 Mexican border disputes.
Camp Adair hosted as many as 45,000 troops and military personnel between 1942 and its decommissioning in 1946. From 1944 to 1946, Camp Adair served as a prisoner of war camp, housing German and Italian POWs. A US. Air Force radar station operated on the site of the former camp headquarters from 1957 until 1969. Some wartime structures survive, including the Fire Station #5, recently repurposed as a cafe and convenience store.