We find some interesting places during our winter explorations.
This one is an expansive wildlife area that also allows hunting, and even offers shotgun and archery ranges. There is an accessible fishing pond. There are miles of trails, which are actually the roads from what was once Oregon’s second largest city, which was a military encampment. There are also peacocks.
This is the E. E. Wilson Wildlife Area, which came into being in 1950 when the US Government gave 1,788 acres of Camp Adair to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. So where did Camp Adair go?
Once upon a time, there was a small Willamette Valley town known as Wells. It was 1941, there was a war on, and the US was being pulled into it. Search was made for 55,000 acres to build a military training camp, and a plot north of Corvallis was chosen. The town of Wells vanished, and during the summer of 1942 1,800 buildings were constructed. Camp Adair had churches, theaters, clubs, stores, a bank, a bakery, and a hospital. Its population reached 35,000 at its peak, making it the second largest city in Oregon at the time. Four infantry divisions trained at this cantonment, which was infamous among the soldiers for its marshy ground and its plentiful poison oak…