Camp Swift

Built in four months in 1942, the camp was activated on May 4 that year with Col. Lawrence A. Kurtz as its first commander, and at its peak held 90,000 troops, the largest army training and transshipment camp in Texas. Besides the infantry divisions it housed the 116th and 120th Tank Destroyer battalions and the Third Army's 5th Headquarters, Special Troops. German prisoners repaired worn field kits and leggings and painted murals, whose photographs are in the Texas State Library. After the war, plans to mine lignite under the camp brought decades of litigation.

What the plaque says

Camp Swift Named for Major General Eben Swift (1854-1935), Camp Swift, established primarily for infantry division training, was a major military training facility for 300,000 men and women during World War II. The camp was active from May 1942 until July 1946, and covered nearly 56,000 acres. Shaped like a triangle, the reservation was like a self-contained city and included 2,750 buildings. The camp had the capacity to house and train 45,000 people. The 95th, the 97th, and the 102nd Infantry divisions and the 10th Mountain Division trained here during the war. The 2nd Infantry Division was processed through the camp after the war. More than 32,000 casualties were suffered by these five divisions. The camp also provided training for more than 100 separate non-divisional combat and other support units, and the only nurses combat training program in Texas. About 4,800 German prisoners of war were also held at Swift. At the end of world War II the camp shifted from war-time training to processing more than 12,400 officers and enlisted personnel from the service to civilian life. On June 30, 1946, the camp became inactive, and utilization was transferred from the U.S. Army to the State of Texas in December 1948. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bastrop State Park — 7.7 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 21 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• McKinney Falls State Park — 24 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 25 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.

More markers nearby

• Rural Farms and Communities Before Camp Swift — 1.3 mi
• McDade — 6.1 mi
• Three Oaks (Goerlitz) Cemetery — 6.5 mi
• Mina Ward School — 6.8 mi