The U.S. Army had a training camp on the outskirts of Waco from 1917-1918 as well as a pilot training (Rich Field) field adjacent to it. It was home to the 32nd Infantry Division (Wisconsin National Guard) before they were shipped out to France. At one time there was nearly 45,000 soldiers there. It even had its own rail line.

The Army forced the City of Waco to shut down its legal red light district before the camp was built. Within a year of closing the camp only two hangers from the old airfield still stood. Every thing else was carried away by the locals.

The Facebook Page is very cool. I am friends with the admin and he has put in a tremendous amount of work into it. He has aligned the layout of the camp (which was over 10,000 acres in size) with the current city streets. Another gentleman has spent hours scouring the Internet web for photos which I was pleasantly surprised are quite abundant.

Lots of maps and Photos.

If you are on FB I highly recommend it.
Waco, Texas Camp MacArthur Facebook page

Camp MacArthur

City of Waco

Units

Related, somewhat.

Quote:

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Attempts to close the Sporting District continued through the Depression, with periodic raids of the district. San Antonio police and military police formed joint task forces to close brothels. But the accidental death of a San Antonio Police Officer by a Military Police Officer in October of 1924 ended the cooperation between the San Antonio Police and the Military Police. [42] The final demise of the district came in 1941 with the beginning of World War II. The military gave the city an ultimatum stating that either they close the district, or downtown San Antonio would be placed off limits to military troops. Facing economic hardship without the support of its large military presence, San Antonio acquiesced. [43] The military proved to be both San Antonio's prostitution's biggest customer and a source of its demise within a span of fifty years.

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San Antonio's "Sporting District" was supposedly one of the largest in the county, until finally shut down by the military in WWII.

Link

Very interesting and thanks for posting. My granddad was the Army's Provost Marshall for San Antonio sometime during those years, perhaps at the end when the military shut down the red light district.

The Reservation