The Hebron CCC and POW Camps

The prisoners came down from a far bigger place. Camp Concordia, on 640 acres north of Concordia, Kansas, where three railroads met, was the first and largest of the sixteen prisoner-of-war camps built in Kansas. The Army took it over on May 1, 1943, and at its peak it held more than 4,000 men, mostly German soldiers captured in Africa, in about 304 buildings that included a 177-bed hospital. Officers among them seldom volunteered for work. It closed on November 8, 1945, and since 2015 a museum in building T-9 has kept a restored guard tower.

What the plaque says

The Hebron CCC and POW Camps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was authorized by Congress in 1933 to provide employment and vocational training to young men during the Great Depression. The CCC worked on forestry and soil conservation projects across the nation. Company 752 of the CCC occupied a camp at this site from October 2, 1934, through August 15, 1941. Up to 200 men were housed in the compound, known as Camp Thayer. The camp motto was "We lead, others follow." Men from Camp Thayer were sent to the Republican Valley after the 1935 flood to perform emergency work. During World War II, six of the nine barracks at the former CCC camp were used as a side camp to house as many as 120 German prisoners of war from the overcrowded POW camp at Concordia, Kansas. The first prisoners arrived in early December 1943. The POWs performed farm work arranged by the Thayer County Non-Stock Cooperative Labor Asso- ciation, replacing local men who had entered military service. The Hebron POW camp closed on November 15, 1945. The site of the camps is now the city's Riverside Park. City of Hebron Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pawnee Indian Museum State Historic Site — 23 mi
  A Kitkahahki Pawnee village of the late 1700s above the Republican, where a museum shelters a lodge the women built and a family bundle carried out of Massacre Canyon and given back to this place.

More markers nearby

• Thayer County — 0.5 mi
• Friedensau — 5.8 mi
• The Forty-Niner Trail — 6.4 mi
• Bruning Army Air Field — 13 mi