Fort Knox

Fort Knox is in Kentucky, south of Louisville and north of Elizabethtown. Kentucky. Fort Knox is a large United States Army post that holds the United States Army Armor Center, the United States Army Recruiting Command, and the United States Army Armor School. Fort Knox is also the site of the United States Museum of Cavalry and Armor and was established in 1949.

Fort Knox covers parts of Hardin, Bullitt and Meade Counties and extends over 109,050 acres or 441 km squared, and contains around 32,000 people daily. During the Civil War when Fort Duffield was founded, fortifications were constructed. This took place in 1862. After the war the site of Fort Knox fell into disuse and disrepair. Some ten thousand acres of land were leased to the government and a training center was built on that site in January of 1918.

This new training camp was named after Henry Knox, who was an artillery general during the American Revolutionary War as well as the country’s first Secretary of War. The camp of Fort Knox was extended with the purchase of an additional 40,000 acres of land in June, 1918. It was then that construction began on what is known today as Fort Knox.

The building program surround the construction of Fort Knox was reduced following the end of the war and reduced further yet when cuts were made to the United States Army in 1921 after the National Defense Act of 1920. Fort Knox was greatly reduced and became a semi-permanent training center for the United States Army.

In 1931 a small force of the mechanized cavalry came to Camp Knox, as it was known then, on assignment for training. The camp was then turned into a permanent garrison and re-named Fort Knox in January of 1932. The First Cavalry Regiment arrived later in the year to become the First Cavalry Regiment (Mechanized). Then in 1936 the First Cavalry Regiment (Mechanized) was joined by the 13th to become the 7th Cavalry Brigade (Mechanized).

Fort Knox quickly became a center for mechanization doctrine and tactics. The success of the German mechanized units in World War II were a major inspiration to operations at Fort Knox. A new Armored Force was then established in July of 1940 with its headquarters at Fort Knox and the First Cavalry became the First Armored Division.

The Armored Force Replacement Center and the Armored Force School were also situated at Fort Knox in October, 1940. The successors of both the Armored Force School and the Armored Force Replacement School are still housed at Fort Knox today. The Fort Knox site was also expanded to cope with all of these new and larger roles. By the year 1943, Fort Knox contained over 3,820 buildings on more than 106,861 acres of land.

In 1936 the U.S. Treasury Department began construction of the U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky on land that was deeded from the military. This ‘gold vault’ was completed in December 1936 and cost more than $560,000 to build. The firs shipments of gold were made from January to July of 1937 and the majority of the United States’ gold reserves were gradually shipped to this gold vault at Fort Knox. During World War II the Fort Know Bullion Depository also held the reserves of many European countries as well as the Magna Carta, the British Crown Jewels and key documents from American history.

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