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Community Corner

SIGN: Aberdeen Proving Ground

What was an acre of land worth in 1917? This sign is located in the median of Rte. 40, near Bel Air Ave.

This sign is hiding in plain sight.  Odds are you’ve driven past it any number of times, maybe without even noticing it was there.  But there can be no doubt about noticing the sign's subject. 

 is located where it is because, in 1917, in the throes of World War I, the Army realized it had no place to test munitions.  Col. Colden Ruggles was charged with finding a place, which was neither too far from industrial areas but far enough from dense population. 

At that time, the farming and canning of tomatoes and shoe peg corn (which only grows here) was an industry worth $1.5 million.  In order to build the Proving Ground, farmers and their livestock were uprooted from their land.

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Some parcels dated back to land grants made by King Charles I to Lord Baltimore in 1632 and had been in families for generations.  It took Congress and two Presidential Proclamations to wrest this land for government use.  Some 69,000 acres were acquired, about half of which was under water.

Farmers were paid $200 an acre, and they, their livestock and even the graves of their dead were relocated. 

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On Jan. 2, 1918, APG began testing weapons, ammunition, and railway artillery. 

During peacetime, APG was a hub of research and development.  In 1923, a hospital, an airfield, a hangar and barracks were constructed thanks to a $2 million grant from President Franklin Roosevelt.  The Ordnance Museum was established to study both domestic and foreign technology.

Aircraft played a large role in the life of the Proving Ground.  Bombing tables were generated to increase the accuracy of such missions.  In Sept. 1921, a Handley Page bomber at APG dropped a 4000 lb. bomb, which was a world record at that time.  In 1922, Army C-2 dirigibles arrived for testing of their bombing capabilities.

In 1923, 1st Lieut. Wendell K. Phillips was the pilot of another Handley Page Bomber.  On June 4, he flew a bouquet of flowers from Georgia to D.C. to present to the first lady, Florence Harding.  On June 5, he was again scheduled to fly.  This time it was from APG to D.C. for a Shrine Convention, where his father, Capt. Charles Phillips, estranged by divorce, was waiting to see him for the first time since he was a little boy, according to the Arlington Cemetery website. 

The plane piloted by Lieut. Phillips crashed on takeoff and he is credited with saving the lives of five others by turning off the engine.  However, Lieut. Phillips perished.

The site continues, that his father was walking down the street in D.C. when he, "saw a picture of his son on a newspaper bulletin board,” and learned of his death.  It also related that the Lieutenant’s wife was involved in a motor vehicle accident as she rushed to Baltimore to take care of her husband’s affairs.

Phillips Army Airfield was named in honor of Lieut. Both Phillips and the name were transferred in 1943 when a new airfield was created.

APG continued to play a major role in the creation and evaluation of the technology of the time.  In 1945, the first digital computer was employed for numerical calculations and the bazooka was invented.  It was formally called a man-portable anti-tank weapons system and the catchier name is purported to come from a musical instrument created by a comedian named Bob Burns.

The era of the Korean War saw APG become the Ordnance Replacement Training Center where all replacement troops were trained.  In 1952, the Human Engineering Lab came into being due to the availability of scientific and technological research, which was performed at APG.

By 1962, APG was the , which oversaw installations from coast to coast and from Alaska to Panama. 

During the Viet Nam War, the Ordnance Officer Candidate School was located here, as was the Land Warfare Lab, Ballistic Research Laboratory, Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity and the Human Engineering Laboratory. According to the APG website, these entities, “made the decades of the 1960’s and 1970’s an extraordinary time in the history of this post.”

In 1971, the Edgewood Arsenal, formerly called the Chemical Center, merged with APG.

Following the 1988-89 trial and conviction of three senior employees working at the Chemical Research, Development and Engineering Center for not complying with federal environmental laws, there has been much more awareness of such issues.

As of 1989, APG employed 14,000 workers, both civilian and military. It is the largest employer in Harford County.

What the Base Realignment and Closure will hold for the future of the post remains to be seen.  Until then, it’s interesting to reflect on how an agricultural area dating back to the beginning of Maryland history came to be a proving ground for the engines of war.

 The State Roads Commission erected this sign.

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