Tobyhanna Army Depot - History

History

From 1900 to 1936, Tobyhanna Lake, and nearby lakes at Gouldsboro and Klondike, were sites of ice collection and storage, producing up to 150 boxcar loads per day between them that was shipped as far as Florida. In 1912, Tobyhanna had a railway station, telegraph, and post office. At that time the U.S. Army had no artillery training range east of Wisconsin, and Major Charles P. Summerall, commander of the 3rd Field Artillery at Fort Myer, Virginia chose the site as a suitable training range. After leasing land for $300 in 1912 and 1913, Summerall persuaded Congress to authorize the purchase of 18,000 acres (73 km²) for $50,000; eventually the military reservation was expanded to 22,000 acres (89 km²) (according to the Tobyhanna Army Depot) or 26,000 acres (105 km²) (according to Pennsylvania DCNR). The land was used as a tank and ambulance corps training center from 1914–1918, for artillery training from 1918–1931 and 1937–1941, and to house Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees 1931-1937. During World War II, initial plans for use of the site as a training site for anti-aircraft artillery were dropped, due to the long range of more modern weapons - some shells strayed onto private land, and "the Scranton Times reported that crews could only fire one or two shells during each pass of a target, and guns were limited to a 65-degree firing arc." Subsequently the camp became the base of an all-black segregated ambulance corps, and a military hospital (19 single-story structures) was constructed in expectation of casualties from the invasion of Japan. At the end of World War II the military reservation became one of 138 sites around the U.S. holding German prisoners of war (a maximum of 300 POWs), and was used for storage of gliders used in the D-Day invasion. From 1946-1948 it was used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In April 1949, most of the military reservation was returned to Pennsylvania, and converted into Game Land 127, Gouldsboro State Park, and Tobyhanna State Park, while 1400 acres (5.7 km²), after briefly being transferred to Pennsylvania, were reacquired by the Army Signal Corps in 1951 as the Tobyhanna Army Depot. This site was selected as having access to East Coast shipping and manufacturers while being outside of possible nuclear blast radii surrounding New York City and Scranton. At that time the decline of anthracite coal mining in the region had led to the unemployment of 35,000 workers in the region, and the new Depot received 600 job applications a day two years in advance of its opening. Tobyhanna is Northeastern Pennsylvania's largest employer.