Volume 11 , Issue 20

Camp Gruber: The War Years

"AMERICA?S entry into World War II brought many changes to the home front. Northeastern Oklahoma felt the impact firsthand on January 8, 1942, when the Muskogee Phoenix confirmed a report naming the Cookson Hills as the site for a planned military cantonment.

"The complex would be named Camp Gruber in honor of the late Brigadier General Edmund L. Gruber, composer of ?The Caisson Song.? The camp was located on Highway 10, eighteen miles east of Muskogee, Oklahoma.

"Manhattan Construction Company of Muskogee was awarded the building contract, and a work force of 12,000 men began construction in February 1942. The production pace in the first month was so hectic that a building was completed every twenty minutes, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It took four months to build the camp, at a project cost of thirty million dollars." -- Camp Gruber: The War Years
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