Fort Eustis

Fort Eustis
Newport News, Virginia
15km 10miles Langley Air Force Base Fort Eustis    Locations of Fort Eustis and Langley AFB within the Hampton Roads area
Fort Eustis Location in Virginia
Coordinates	37°09′33″N 76°34′31″W / 37.1593°N 76.5752°W / 37.1593; -76.5752
Type	Army Post
Site information
Controlled by	United States Army
Site history
Built	7 March 1918
In use	7 March 1918 – present
Garrison information
Garrison	733d Mission Support Group (USAF)

Fort Eustis is a United States Army installation in Newport News, Virginia. In 2010, it was combined with nearby Langley Air Force Base to form Joint Base Langley–Eustis.

The

.

In accordance with the

633d Air Base Wing

(USAF). The 733d Mission Support Group manages the installation's garrison operations.

History

Mulberry Island

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Much of the low-lying land along the

Lord Delaware

with a fleet of ships headed upriver bringing supplies from England and a fresh determination to stay. He literally turned the situation around by convincing the colonists, who had just abandoned Jamestown, to turn their ships around and go back to colonizing in the area, rather than return to England.

Phettiplace (Peter) Clouse was one of the early colonists. Born in Bremen, Germany in 1593, he came to Jamestown, Virginia in 1608 at the age of 15. He sailed upon the English ship Starr from London working as an indentured servant for his passage to the English Colony in America. In 1619, he was granted 100 acres of land on the east bank of the Warwick River (Warwicksqueake River) on Mulberry Island by Sir George Yardley, Colonial Governor of Virginia. Part of his land grant today is presumed to be land occupied by military housing, a golf course and firing ranges at Fort Eustis. Phettiplace Clouse survived the Indian Massacre of 22 March 1622, as he was listed among the living on the Jamestown Colony muster of 16 February 1623. As a landowner, he was a member of the House of Burgess, Jamestown, Virginia Colony and recorded in attendance 16 October 1629, representing Mulberry Island along with another owner, Thomas Harwood.

Among those who almost left was John Rolfe, who had departed England with his wife and child in 1609, with some very promising seeds for a different strain of tobacco which he hoped would prove more favorable to export from Virginia than had been the experience to date. He had been shipwrecked on Bermuda in the Sea Venture, lost his wife and child by this time, but still had the untried seeds. The turning point at Mulberry Island delivered Lord Delaware and businessman-farmer John Rolfe, two very different men, back to Jamestown, where they and the others were to find new success.

Lord Delaware's skills and resources combined with Rolfe's new strain of tobacco to provide the colony with effective leadership structure as the new cash crop began financial stabilization by 1612. By 1614, Rolfe owned an interest in a tobacco plantation. That same year, he became the husband of Pocahontas. For the next 300 years, Mulberry Island remained very rural, until it was bought by the Federal Government in 1918.

American Civil War: The Warwick Line

During the

A few miles upstream along the James River, a satellite facility, Camp Wallace, was established in 1918 as the Upper Firing Range of for artillery training. Consisting of 30 barracks, six storehouses, and eight mess halls.^[2]

Camp Wallace included some rugged terrain and bluffs overlooking the river. It was the site of anti-aircraft warfare training during World War II. Many years later, the Army's aerial tramway was first erected at Camp Wallace and later moved to Fort Eustis near the Reserve Fleet for further testing. The purpose of the tramway was to provide cargo movement from ship-to-shore, shore-to-ship, and overland. The tramway supplemented beach and pier operations, used unloading points deemed unusable due to inadequate or non-navigable waters, or to traverse land that was otherwise impassable.^[3]

In 1971, the U.S. Army agreed to a land swap with Anheuser-Busch in return for a larger parcel which is located directly across Skiffe's Creek from Fort Eustis. Along with land previously owned by Colonial Williamsburg, the former Camp Wallace land became part of a massive development.^[4]

1923: Camp becomes Fort Eustis

Camp Abraham Eustis became Fort Eustis and a permanent military installation in 1923. In 1925 Eustis National Forest was established on the installation. The post was garrisoned by artillery and infantry units until 1931, when it became a federal prison, primarily for bootleggers during Prohibition. The repeal of Prohibition resulted in a prisoner decline and the post was taken over by various other military and non-military activities including a WPA camp that utilized some of the barracks on the post during the Great Depression.

World War II, modern times

Fort Eustis was reopened as a military installation in August 1940 as the

On 31 July 1986, the Transportation Corps celebrated its 44th anniversary. This was also the day the Transportation Corps was inducted into the

The regimental crest is inscribed with the Corps motto—Spearhead of Logistics—to symbolize a soldier's affiliation with the Transportation Corps. Upon completion of the Transportation Officer Basic Course, officers are automatically inducted into the Corps, Warrant Officers' are inducted upon completion of the Warrant Officer Candidate Course and enlisted soldiers are inducted upon completion of Advanced Individual Training.

Major General Fred E. Elam, the first Regimental Commander, named General

U.S. Army transportation museum

The

Gallery

• 
  The 1811 was built for the U.S. Army by EMD. It is an

  gauge trucks to run in Europe and Russia

  . Now it belongs to the museum at Fort Eustis, but sits abandoned in Hanks Yard.
• 
  gauge

  , recently painted.
• 
  USA 1663, a GE 80-ton switcher, is known as the "tow truck" for its frequent retrieval of the other locomotives on post.
• 
  C-7 Caribou.
• 
  CH-54A (H54A) Tarhe "Sky Crane"
• 
  VZ-8P-2 Flying Jeep developed by Piasecki

  in 1962
• 
  CYBERNETIC WALKING MACHINE Built by

  General Electric

  Corp in 1970. It was designed for transporting up to 500 pounds of cargo over extremely difficult terrain.
• 
  H-34 at Felker Army Airfield.

Current units

The following units are stationed at Fort Eustis:

• U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command
• 128th Aviation Brigade (US Army Aviation Logistics School)
• 7th Transportation Brigade
• 53rd Transportation Battalion (Movement Control)
• 567th Transportation Company (Inland Cargo Transfer)^[5]
• Installation Management Command, Atlantic
• Army Center for Initial Military Training
• Army Training Support Center
• Enterprise Multimedia Center
• Army Aviation Applied Technology Directorate
• 597th Transportation Brigade
• U.S. Army Transportation Museum
• 12th Military Police Detachment (CID)
• 93rd Signal Brigade (Strategic)
• 362nd Training Squadron, Detachment 1 Air Force Helicopter Technical School^[6]
• Joint Deployment Training Center
• NCO Academy (Aviation Branch ALC)
• US Army Flight Concepts Division
• McDonald Army Community Hospital
• 221st Military Police Detachment
• 3rd Military Police Detachment (K9)
• 74th Engineer Detachment (Dive)^[7]
• 86th Engineer Detachment (Dive)^[8]
• 511th Engineer Detachment (Dive)
• 569th Engineer Detachment (Dive)
• Port Security Unit 305

See also

• Fort Eustis Military Railroad
• Logistics Proponency Office
• Matthew Jones House
• U.S. Army Transportation Museum

References