Camp Forrest/Forrest Camp Spencer Artillery Range -ca. 1941-1946-

The parent camp near Tullahoma was built in 1926 by the Tennessee National Guard as Camp Peay, after Governor Austin Peay. During the war it took the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate cavalry general who had been a slave trader before the war. Camp Forrest became a prisoner-of-war camp on May 12, 1942, and held Italian and German prisoners. The 2nd Ranger Battalion was formed there on April 1, 1943, and Lieutenant Colonel James Rudder led it ashore at Pointe du Hoc on June 6, 1944.

What the plaque says

Camp Forrest/Forrest Camp Spencer Artillery Range -ca. 1941-1946- In January 1941, the Army began construction of the 30,617-acre Spencer Artillery Range as an annex of Camp Forrest. Intended as a firing range for heavy artillery, it was utilized by other units, including infantry. The 2nd Ranger Battalion practiced rappelling and bluff scaling here on the Rocky River Gulf. During the D-Day invasion, that same battalion scaled the bluffs at Point du Hoc near Omaha Beach in Normandy.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fall Creek Falls State Park — 8.5 mi
  A New Deal park on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, where Cane Creek has cut a gorge and a 256-foot waterfall drops into it.
• Savage Gulf State Park — 14 mi
  Roughly 19,000 acres of gorge and sandstone bluff on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, a state park of its own since 2022, with the Stone Door and a National Natural Landmark.
• Rock Island State Park — 18 mi
  A park where the Collins, Rocky and Caney Fork rivers meet at the head of Center Hill Lake, with a gorge of waterfalls below a 1917 dam and the remains of a cotton-mill town.
• Rhea County Courthouse — 27 mi
  The 1891 Dayton courthouse where John T. Scopes was tried in July 1925 for teaching evolution, with the second-floor courtroom restored and a trial museum in the basement.

More markers nearby

• Trail Of Tears circa 1838 — steps away
• Gilbert Gaul, Civil War Painter — 7.2 mi
• Burritt College — 11 mi
• Higgenbotham's Cave — 13 mi