Camp Kearny, California

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Approximate Base Size: 13000 Acres


Airport ICAO ID: KNKX

Official Base Website: Camp Kearny

Current Role: Former Army camp landscape now largely within active MCAS Miramar airfield / Marine Corps installation and surrounding San Diego development.

Camp Kearny was a World War I U.S. Army National Guard training camp on Linda Vista Mesa north of San Diego. It was one of the rapid-mobilization cantonments created after the United States entered the war in April 1917, and it became the formative home of the 40th Division, the "Sunshine Division," assembled from National Guard organizations from California, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. The camp should not be confused with the later Navy and Marine Corps air-station uses of the same Miramar landscape, although those later installations inherited the ground, the Kearny name, and some of the geographic advantages first exploited by the Army.

The site mattered because San Diego offered year-round training weather, a deep harbor, rail connections, municipal booster support, and a large undeveloped mesa where a divisional camp could be assembled quickly. The Army did not merely occupy a few buildings on the edge of town. It created an instant wartime city intended for roughly 30,000 soldiers and 10,000 cavalry horses and mules, with a main cantonment, remount station, hospital complex, training ranges, artillery areas, trenches, utilities, roads, a railroad spur, mess halls, warehouses, welfare buildings, theaters, libraries, and service facilities. The Army's demand for space and San Diego's eagerness for a permanent military future combined to produce one of the most important military landscapes in the city's early twentieth-century history.

Camp Kearny's Army life was brief but intense. The Army chose the Linda Vista site in May 1917, built rapidly through the summer, organized the 40th Division there in September, trained tens of thousands of soldiers, used the post for divisional and replacement activity, and then turned it into a demobilization and convalescent center at the end of the war. The Army camp ceased functioning as a military base in 1920, and most of its World War I buildings were later demolished, salvaged, or removed. Yet the site did not lose military value. The abandoned parade ground and former training lands became part of the aviation and training evolution that led to Naval Auxiliary Air Station Camp Kearny, Marine Corps Air Depot Camp Kearny, NAS Miramar, and finally today's Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.

The correct status is therefore layered. Camp Kearny as an Army installation was a World War I National Guard training camp that closed in 1920. The land later became a Navy and Marine Corps installation, and the successor MCAS Miramar remains active. That later continuity is historically important, but it does not make Camp Kearny a continuing Army post after 1920.

Mission Evolution

Camp Kearny began as an emergency mobilization answer to a national Army problem. When the United States entered World War I, the Army needed places where it could turn National Guard units and new recruits into deployable formations. The War Department planned a network of new camps, including National Guard camps and National Army cantonments. San Diego civic leaders, especially through the Chamber of Commerce and Congressman William Kettner's political efforts, pushed hard for the southwestern camp. The city offered land, utilities, roads, water, gas, electricity, and a railroad connection, making the proposal financially and operationally attractive to the War Department.

The first mission was divisional training. Camp Kearny was designed as an infantry-centered National Guard training camp, but its functions went beyond infantry drill. It supported cavalry and artillery animals through a large remount station, field artillery work, machine-gun ranges, pistol ranges, trench warfare training, gas-defense exercises, hospital care, logistics, morale and recreation services, and a large divisional support system. The 40th Division's presence gave the camp its central military identity. Organized at Camp Kearny on September 16, 1917, the division gathered National Guard units from six western states and trained there until it moved east in July 1918 before sailing for Europe.

The camp's mission broadened when the first wave of divisional training gave way to replacement, depot, convalescent, and demobilization functions. The 40th Division reached France in August 1918, but it was used principally as a depot division rather than fighting as an intact formation. Its soldiers reinforced other combat divisions in France, while the camp at San Diego continued to support military processing and training. After the Armistice, the Army designated Camp Kearny as one of its demobilization points. Returning soldiers came through for examinations, discharge processing, and recovery. The camp hospital and convalescent facilities became especially important during this final phase.

After the Army closure, the mission identity of the landscape shifted to aviation and later naval and Marine Corps use. The Army had never built a permanent airfield during the World War I camp period, although aircraft used the parade ground as early as 1918. In the 1920s, Charles Lindbergh famously used the abandoned parade ground to practice takeoffs and landings before his 1927 transatlantic flight. The Navy then leased the former parade ground as an auxiliary dirigible base in the early 1930s. During World War II the Navy and Marine Corps returned in force, creating Naval Auxiliary Air Station Camp Kearny and Marine Corps Air Depot Camp Kearny, later folded into the Miramar aviation complex. These later missions were Navy and Marine Corps missions, but they were only possible because the Army's World War I camp had already marked the mesa as federal military ground.

Operational Role

The operational role of Camp Kearny was to receive, organize, train, support, and then demobilize large bodies of soldiers. Its first challenge was not tactical training but construction. The Army, the city, contractors, railroads, utility companies, and local suppliers had to turn sparsely settled mesa land into a functioning camp in a matter of months. The main cantonment, hospital, remount depot, roads, utilities, warehouses, mess halls, recreation buildings, and ranges all had to be built while soldiers were expected to arrive almost immediately. This was wartime mobilization under pressure, and Camp Kearny showed how much the Army depended on local civic organization and civilian construction capacity.

The camp was planned for divisional scale. Its main cantonment covered approximately five and a half square miles and was organized around parade grounds, company areas, storehouses, mess halls, stables, and internal roads. The Marine Corps historical overview of Miramar reports that the camp contained 1,162 buildings, including 696 main structures, ten warehouses, and 140 mess halls, with each mess hall able to seat 250 men. That meant the camp could serve roughly 35,000 men in a single seating. It also had miles of concrete and dirt roads and consumed electricity at a scale comparable to the city of San Diego itself once fully operational. Those details matter because they show Camp Kearny as a functioning military city rather than a temporary tent field.

Training was intentionally broad and modern for 1917-1918. The Army was trying to prepare soldiers for a battlefield that combined old and new military systems. Horses and mules were still essential for cavalry, artillery, and supply, so the remount depot could handle thousands of animals. At the same time, troops trained with machine guns, field artillery, trench systems, gas masks, barbed-wire problems, live-fire exercises, and motorized support. The training ranges north and east of the main camp included short-, mid-, and long-distance rifle targets, machine-gun ranges, pistol ranges in nearby canyons, and artillery areas southeast of the cantonment. Trench systems near San Clemente Canyon gave soldiers practice in the kind of warfare they expected to encounter in France.

The 40th Division was Camp Kearny's central operational product. Major General Frederick S. Strong organized the division there in September 1917 from National Guard units of the western states. California troops arrived first, followed by units from the other states, and the division reached roughly 30,000 soldiers by mid-November. Training took place day and night, with the goal of preparing the division for modern combat. When the division left Camp Kearny in July 1918, it moved to Camp Mills, New York, and then overseas. In France, the division was divided for use as a replacement or depot division, sending men to other formations including the 26th, 28th, 77th, 80th, 81st, 82nd, and 89th Divisions. The camp's effect therefore reached the Western Front through replacement manpower even though the 40th Division did not fight as a unified division in World War I.

The camp hospital was another major operational system. It opened initially in tented form in September 1917, moved patients into completed buildings by late November, and developed into a substantial medical complex northwest of the main cantonment. It included laboratories, dental spaces, staff quarters, ward buildings, and facilities for convalescence. After the war, the hospital became part of the demobilization and convalescent mission, providing examinations, recovery care, and vocational or restorative training for soldiers who needed more than routine discharge processing. This medical role became one of the camp's most important post-Armistice functions.

Camp Kearny also functioned as a morale and social-control institution. San Diego lay about fourteen miles away, and transportation was limited in the camp's early months, so the Army and welfare agencies built social infrastructure on site. YMCA huts, Jewish Welfare Board activity, Red Cross services, Knights of Columbus facilities, a camp library, athletic programs, night classes, and the 2,500-seat Liberty Theater helped keep soldiers occupied and physically fit. Sports, educational lectures, religious services, movies, vaudeville, reading rooms, and camp newspapers were not incidental luxuries. They were part of the Army's attempt to manage a huge temporary population of young men under wartime discipline.

The operational story ended with demobilization. Once the Armistice was signed, construction stopped and the camp shifted toward discharge and convalescent processing. Thousands of soldiers passed through for physical examinations, administrative processing, and final movement home. The hospital complex remained useful after most of the purely training functions had ended. By 1920 the Army camp ceased functioning, and the World War I cantonment era was over.

Units, Organizations, and Systems

The 40th Division was the defining unit at Camp Kearny. Created on September 16, 1917, it was assembled from National Guard units from California, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. The division's "Sunshine" identity and early history began at Camp Kearny, and Army historical accounts continue to connect the modern 40th Infantry Division lineage to that 1917 formation. The division's World War I service was complicated: its members went overseas, but the division was used as a depot division, providing replacements rather than fighting as a single tactical formation. Even so, the camp was central to the division's institutional origin.

Within the 40th Division structure, Camp Kearny supported infantry, artillery, cavalry, medical, sanitary, quartermaster, bakery, and support organizations. The 65th Field Artillery Brigade and other field artillery elements relied on the camp's range and animal-support infrastructure. The 115th Sanitary Train and camp hospital linked the installation to the Army medical system. The Division Bakery Company, No. 323, organized in September 1917, illustrates the logistical scale of the division: producing daily bread for tens of thousands of soldiers was a military operation in its own right.

The remount system was especially significant. Located about a mile southwest of the main cantonment, the remount station supplied horses and mules for cavalry and artillery units. It contained large corrals, breeding quarters, feed storehouses, veterinary buildings, officer quarters, and enlisted housing. The Army was entering a mechanized age, but Camp Kearny's remount station shows that animal power still stood at the center of U.S. Army mobility in World War I.

The camp also belonged to a broader War Department mobilization system. It was one of the new camps built by the emergency construction program to support the rapid expansion of the Army. San Diego's offer of land and utilities helped secure the camp, but the site then operated within the Army's national network of training, replacement, embarkation, convalescent, and demobilization camps. After the 40th Division left, Camp Kearny's role in receiving, processing, or supporting troops connected it to that larger wartime manpower system.

After the Army camp closed, the successor organizations changed. The Navy, Marine Corps, and later the Marine Corps air station became the controlling military identities. Naval Auxiliary Air Station Camp Kearny, Marine Corps Air Depot Camp Kearny, NAS Miramar, and MCAS Miramar were not Army units, but they show how the former Army ground remained valuable to later military systems. The modern 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing presence at MCAS Miramar belongs to the Navy/Marine Corps successor story rather than to Camp Kearny's Army service.

Facilities and Physical Layout

Camp Kearny's layout reflected the logic of a World War I divisional cantonment. The main cantonment sat on the Linda Vista / Miramar mesa and was organized around parade grounds, company tent streets, storehouses, mess buildings, stables, and internal circulation roads. The Marine Corps historical overview places the Army camp within the boundaries of the present station in the area now occupied by the airfield. That placement explains why the later aviation mission grew naturally from the old parade-ground and open-mesa landscape.

The camp's acreage is best described as approximately 13,000 acres for the World War I Army use: an 8,000-acre city-provided leasehold plus about 5,000 acres of adjoining practice and maneuver land. Some later summaries round this to "over 12,000 acres" or give 12,721 acres, but the documentary breakdown of 8,000 and 5,000 acres is the clearest way to understand the site. The main cantonment was only part of that land. Training ranges, maneuver areas, the remount station, hospital lands, roads, and support areas occupied the larger footprint.

The built camp was large. It included more than a thousand buildings, many of them temporary wartime structures, and hundreds of company, mess, warehouse, administrative, hospital, welfare, and support facilities. The camp had concrete and dirt roads, a railroad spur to the Santa Fe line, gas, electricity, water, and other utilities that San Diego had promised as part of its bid. The physical plant was intended to move men, animals, food, ammunition, supplies, mail, and equipment at divisional scale.

The hospital complex was a major sub-installation. Located northwest of the main cantonment, it covered roughly sixty acres and was planned with about fifty buildings. It contained wards, kitchens, laboratories, dental spaces, psychological clinic functions, staff housing, warehouses, and Red Cross support. It later served the postwar convalescent and Public Health Service transition. The hospital's size and longevity explain why its structures remained visible on maps and aerial photographs after most of the camp's World War I cantonment had disappeared.

The remount depot formed another distinct sub-area. It was located southwest of the main cantonment and was built around large corrals and animal-support infrastructure. It could support thousands of horses and mules, making it essential to cavalry and artillery training. The remount depot also helps explain the spread of the camp across the mesa and canyon landscape: a divisional camp needed not just barracks and drill fields, but space for animals, feed, veterinary functions, and movement.

The ranges and tactical training areas wrapped the cantonment in a larger combat-training landscape. Rifle ranges, machine-gun ranges, pistol ranges, artillery areas, trenches, gas-training spaces, and live-fire exercise areas gave Camp Kearny a functional geography beyond the camp streets. Soldiers did not simply parade on open ground; they fired weapons, practiced under simulated gas conditions, moved through trenches, trained at night, and exercised across broken mesa and canyon terrain.

Post-Army Reuse and Successor Military Landscape

Camp Kearny closed as an Army installation in 1920, but the military story of the site did not end. Most buildings were removed or demolished, and the mesa quieted for a time. The abandoned parade ground, however, remained useful as an emergency landing field. Aircraft had landed there during the Army period, and in 1927 Charles Lindbergh used the old parade ground to practice takeoffs and landings in the Spirit of St. Louis before leaving San Diego for New York and then Paris. That episode became one of the best-known non-Army events tied to the former camp.

In the early 1930s the Navy became interested in the former parade ground for lighter-than-air aviation. The Eleventh Naval District leased about 430 acres of the former parade ground for an auxiliary airship facility. The Navy constructed a mooring mast, tanks, and support facilities. The dramatic USS Akron event in 1932 tied the site to the brief but important interwar airship era. This was a Navy use, not an Army continuation, but it shows how Camp Kearny's open mesa and former parade ground made the site attractive for aviation.

World War II transformed the former Camp Kearny lands again. Marine Corps training activity at Camp Holcomb / Camp Elliott occupied parts of the former Army landscape and surrounding areas, while the Navy and Marine Corps developed aviation facilities on the western side. The Navy commissioned Naval Auxiliary Air Station Camp Kearny in February 1943, and the Marines established Marine Corps Air Depot Camp Kearny later that year, soon renamed Marine Corps Air Depot Miramar to avoid confusion. The combined air-station story led to NAS Miramar and then MCAS Miramar. The modern installation's fame as a Navy fighter base and later Marine Corps air station belongs to this successor era, but the origin of the military landscape lies in the 1917 Army camp.

The current site is active as Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, home to major Marine aviation functions. It is not an Army installation today. For Army history, the important point is continuity of place rather than continuity of service branch. Camp Kearny was the Army's original large-scale military use of the Miramar mesa. Later Navy and Marine Corps use turned that same ground into one of the best-known military aviation landscapes in the United States.

Current Status

Camp Kearny's World War I cantonment is closed and no longer survives as a distinct Army post. The representative core of the former camp lies within the active MCAS Miramar airfield area, while other portions of the historic landscape have been altered by Navy and Marine Corps construction, roads, runways, utility systems, training areas, cemetery use, and civilian development around San Diego. The physical remains of the Army camp are not as legible as those of some preserved forts because most wartime structures were temporary, removed, or overtaken by later military construction.

The name survives in several ways. Kearny Mesa, Camp Kearny references in Miramar history, and the memory of the 40th Division's origin all preserve the Army layer. Historical summaries of MCAS Miramar typically begin with Camp Kearny because the 1917 Army camp established the first major military identity of the site. The later air station did not arise from an empty landscape; it arose from a place that San Diego and the War Department had already adapted for large-scale military purposes.

Chronology

• 1915-1916 San Diego civic leaders and the Chamber of Commerce began organized efforts to secure an Army camp for the region, emphasizing land, utilities, transportation, and the economic value of military investment.
• 1917-04-06 The United States declared war on Germany, creating the urgent national demand for new training camps.
• 1917-05-24 San Diego received word that the Linda Vista / Miramar mesa area had been chosen for the camp, and the Secretary of War approved the decision.
• 1917-05 to 1917-07 Construction planning and site work accelerated; Army engineers and construction quartermasters arrived to lay out the camp and oversee construction.
• 1917 summer Contractors, city utility efforts, railroad work, and Army construction created the camp's main cantonment, roads, utilities, hospital, remount, and support areas.
• 1917-09-01 The camp hospital began operation in temporary tented facilities before permanent buildings were ready.
• 1917-09-16 Major General Frederick S. Strong organized the 40th Division at Camp Kearny.
• 1917-09 to 1917-11 National Guard units from California and neighboring western states arrived; the division grew toward approximately 30,000 soldiers.
• 1917-09-20 Division Bakery Company No. 323 was organized, illustrating the large-scale quartermaster and subsistence requirements of the camp.
• 1917-10 Construction of trench-training systems began near San Clemente Canyon.
• 1917-11-26 Camp hospital buildings were sufficiently complete for patients to be transferred from tents into buildings.
• 1918 The 40th Division trained at Camp Kearny in infantry, artillery, machine-gun, gas-defense, trench, live-fire, mounted, and divisional exercises.
• 1918-02 Camp Kearny gas-training exercises exposed several soldiers to mild gas effects after mask or respirator failures, showing the realism and hazards of chemical-warfare preparation.
• 1918-07-26 The 40th Division departed Camp Kearny for Camp Mills, New York.
• 1918-08 The 40th Division sailed for Europe and arrived in France, where it was later used as a depot/replacement division.
• 1918-11-11 The Armistice ended active fighting in World War I and shifted Camp Kearny toward demobilization and convalescent work.
• 1919-03 Elements and personnel of the 40th Division returned to Camp Kearny during demobilization.
• 1919 The camp served as a demobilization and convalescent center; vocational and restorative training supported recovering soldiers.
• 1920-10-31 Camp Kearny closed as an Army camp according to the detailed MCAS Miramar historical overview. Some later summaries give October 20, 1920 as the formal closure date.
• 1922 Associated World War I camp buildings were demolished or salvaged, according to Navy environmental restoration history.
• 1927 Charles Lindbergh used the abandoned Camp Kearny parade ground to practice landings and takeoffs before his transatlantic flight.
• 1931-1932 The Navy leased part of the former parade ground as an auxiliary airship facility connected to the lighter-than-air program.
• 1943-02-20 The Navy redesignated the aviation site as Naval Auxiliary Air Station Camp Kearny.
• 1943 The Marine Corps established Marine Corps Air Depot Camp Kearny, later renamed Marine Corps Air Depot Miramar to reduce confusion.
• 1945 The Navy and Marine Corps air-station uses were combined in the Miramar aviation complex.
• 1947-08-15 The property was officially transferred to the Navy for Naval Auxiliary Air Station Miramar.
• 1997 The site became Marine Corps Air Station Miramar under the modern Marine Corps successor identity.
• Present The former Army Camp Kearny landscape is part of the active MCAS Miramar and surrounding San Diego military/civilian landscape; the Army camp itself remains closed.

Information sources (11)

1. PDFMarine Corps Air Station Miramar Environmental Management System

   Historical Overview of Marine Corps Air Station, Miramar, San Diego California, ICRMP Appendix B.

2. WEBNAVFAC Southwest, Environmental Restoration Program

   Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.

3. WEBMilitary OneSource

   Marine Corps Air Station Miramar Base Overview.

4. PDFJ. Martin, "Patriotism and Profit: San Diego's Camp Kearny,"

   The Journal of San Diego History.

5. WEBArmy University Press / NCO Journal

   40th ID: The history of the 'Sunshine' Division.

6. WEBAirNav

   KNKX - Miramar MCAS (Joe Foss Field) Airport.

7. WEBMarine Corps Air Station Miramar

   official website.

8. WEBLibrary of Congress

   Camp Kearny The most popular place in camp.

9. WEBCalisphere / California State Library

   Camp Kearny, soldiers and camp, views 1-3.

10. WEBUC San Diego Library Digital Collections

    Souvenir folder of Camp Kearney, San Diego, California.

11. WEBSDSU Digital Collections

    Camp Kearny, 1918.