Category Archives: Military sites

Rock Island Arsenal is located on an island on the Mississippi River between the cities of Davenport, Iowa, and Rock Island, Illinois. It has a group of historic cannons on display and the largest one is known as Atomic Annie, The M65 atomic cannon shot 11 in diameter projectiles over 20 miles. It also had the capability of shooting nuclear projectiles. It was developed in the 1950s but was decommissioned in the 1960s. It was determined it was easier to use airplanes instead of cannons.

Rock Island Arsenal is still an active military base but the do allow visitors to enter, after a background check, to see the historic sites and museum.

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This graffiti covered wall is in a field near the small town of Ipava, Illinois which lies about forty miles southwest of Peoria. In the 1940s, it had a population of about six hundred people. During World War II, the area north of Ipava was chosen for a military training base because it was in close proximity to the railyard in Galesburg and a large relatively flat section of the state. The military forced farmers into selling their land and acquired almost 18,000 acres of land to create Camp Ellis, named for Sergeant Michael B. Ellis, a World War I Medal of Honor recipient from East Saint Louis, Illinois.

The base was constructed in two months and had over two thousand buildings, including libraries, gymnasiums, seven chapels, an outdoor amphitheater, and a baseball diamond. The base housed over 25,000 troops, and almost overnight it rivaled many of Illinois’s largest cities in population. The base trained thousands of soldiers in engineering, medical, maintenance and support jobs. Besides training US soldiers, the base also had a separate section that held five thousand German prisoners of war.

At the end of the war, the base was deemed surplus. Part of it was used by the Illinois National Guard, but they too abandoned the base in the 1950s. The land was converted back into farmland, and today most people driving through the area would not know that it had once been one of the largest military bases in the United States. All that remains are a few foundations and the old rifle range walls. They stand along Rifle Range Road and are covered in graffiti.

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