By Gustav Person
Installation Historian
Thursday, August 23, 2012

Fort Belvoir marks Aug. 24, 1912 as its birthday, making Belvoir 100 years old on Friday.

The centennial celebrates the Army’s acquisition and occupation of the land on which Fort Belvoir is located.

Throughout much of the 18th Century, the land was owned and farmed by the Fairfax family which coined the name “Belvoir” (Beautiful to See) to describe its attractiveness.

During the 19th Century, the land was sold to small farmers, tradespeople and professionals who moved into the area around Accotink Village. Black and white communities developed strong social and cultural institutions in the post-Civil War era.

In the early 20th Century, city planners of the District of Columbia, about 18 miles upstream on the Potomac River, realized that a new reformatory/workhouse for youthful criminals was needed. However, as today, land within the District was at a premium, so they cast about for another location in the vicinity. In 1910, the District acquired the Belvoir Peninsula from the Otterback family for the construction of this reformatory. However, local community groups and especially patriotic organizations such as the Daughters of the American Revolution quickly opposed the establishment of a prison on land closely associated with the area’s colonial past. It was remembered that George Washington had spent considerable portions of time at Belvoir visiting and being mentored by the Fairfax’s. He often reminisced that the happiest periods of his youth had been spent there.

The District was forced to reevaluate its original plans, and for that reason, the reformatory was actually built at Lorton, a few miles away.

Meanwhile, in 1901, the U.S. Army Engineer School had been transferred from Willets Point on Long Island to Washington Barracks in the District of Columbia. Now re-named Fort McNair it was, like today, a cramped installation and unsuitable for extensive field training for the engineer Soldiers. Following a request by the Army, the U.S. Congress transferred the property to the War Department to use the land as a training site. The site was chosen by the Corps of Engineers because of its proximity to the existing school, its adequate water supply and its challenging terrain which was excellent for tactical, marksmanship and basic engineer training.

On Aug. 24, 1912, the 62nd Congress published an order transferring title to the land as follows: “There is hereby appropriated, out of any money in the United States Treasury not otherwise appropriated, the sum of thirty-three thousand dollars to reimburse the government of the District of Columbia for this site acquired for a reformatory for the District of Columbia, which site is transferred to the Secretary of War for such purposes as may be hereafter specifically authorized by Congress, and the jurisdiction now vested in the Commissioners of the District of Columbia, said site, being that certain parcel of land in the county of Fairfax, State of Virginia, known as “Belvoir” or the “White House” tract, containing fifteen hundred acres, is hereby transferred to the Secretary of War.”

During the summer of the following year, engineer Soldiers first came to train, and were quartered at a small tented camp at the southern end of the peninsula which they named “Camp Belvoir.” They continued to train at Belvoir during the fair weather months for the next five years until America entered the First World War. A huge new cantonment, named Camp Andrew A. Humphreys, was constructed there beginning in January 1918. From these humble beginnings, the Army thereafter transformed Belvoir from a small temporary camp into the major Strategic Sustaining Base that it is today.