The Belvoir area became a “strategic, sustaining base” 300 years before the Fort even existed. Captain John Smith came here in 1608 to get corn that helped Jamestown survive. Belvoir, “beautiful to see,” is the name a Fairfax family member gave his mansion and estate. (George Washington was a frequent guest.) The mansion burned in 1783, ten years after its owner returned to Britain. The Federal government acquired Belvoir, in 1910, for a children’s reformatory. This idea foundered over objections to what was essentially a prison being built on land connected with the “founding fathers.” Two years later, the War Department acquired the land.
In 1915 the Army Engineer School started field training at Belvoir. The Army expanded its holdings at Belvoir after the United States entered World War I. Training increased, and construction of extensive temporary facilities began. The post was named Camp A. A. Humphreys, in honor of a Civil War general and former Army Corps of Engineers chief. For a year after the war ended in November 1918, the Camp also served as a demobilization center.
Camp Humphreys remained open and active at the end of World War I. In 1919 the Engineer School headquarters moved to the Camp. Camp Humphreys became Fort Humphreys, a permanent post, in 1922. After 1924 Fort Humphreys also housed the Engineer Board, which tested and developed equipment, including assault boats, portable steel bridges and mine detectors. (The Board, whose name had changed to the Belvoir Research, Development and Engineering Center, moved from Fort Belvoir as a result of the 1995 BRAC round.)
In 1935 Fort Humphreys became Fort Belvoir, expanding again in 1940 as the United States began to prepare for World War II. Innovative training increased. (The obstacle course was first used at Fort Belvoir.) Engineering schools were among the military schools providing skills needed for the increasingly complex nature of warfare, and credited with playing a major role in the Allied victory.
With the end of the war, Fort Belvoir contracted. However extensive training resumed during the Korean and Vietnamese War. When the Defense Department was established in 1947 other military agencies moved into the Fort. In 1988 the Engineer School moved, due to lack of sufficient land for training, to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.
Few other military installations in the world today compare with Fort Belvoir, which provides logistical and administrative support to 90 diverse organizations. With expansion and upgrading, Fort Belvoir will be well equipped to absorb, over the next 5 years, the 22,000 people to be transferred under the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) 2005 program.
A more detailed history of Fort Belvoir can be found at http://www.belvoir.army.mil/.