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Camp Logan was a World War I-era army training camp in Houston, Texas. The site of the camp is now primarily occupied by Memorial Park where it borders the Crestwood neighborhood, near Memorial Elementary School. Some chunks of concrete, many building foundations, and extensive trenches used for training or middens still remain in the heavily-forested park. Many of the trails through the park in this area trace the routes of old Camp Logan roads. One stretch of a Camp Logan road remains in original condition, that being the shell-surfaced service road to the golf course.^{[citation needed]}

A map of Camp Logan as well as other resources about the camp and its history are available at the Houston Public Library in the Texas and Local History Collection, housed in the Julia Ideson building, next door to the Central Library downtown.^{[citation needed]}

A historical marker in the park across the street from the school commemorates the camp, and the 1917 riot that occurred there. The marker was, initially, to be placed by the Memorial Park golf course club house. This was strongly opposed by The Friends of Memorial Park. The group felt that the marker would be better suited for location in a right of way median located at Washington Avenue and Wescott, an area that was not a part of Memorial Park. The marker was finally placed on the edge of the park at the corner of Arno Street and Haskell.

On August 23, 1917, a riot erupted in Houston. Near noon, two policemen arrested a black soldier for interfering with their arrest of a black woman in the Fourth Ward. Early in the afternoon, when Cpl. Charles Baltimore, one of the twelve black military policemen with the battalion, inquired about the soldier's arrest, words were exchanged and the policeman hit Baltimore over the head. The MPs fled. The police fired at Baltimore three times, chased him into an unoccupied house, and took him to police headquarters. Though he was soon released, a rumor quickly reached Camp Logan that he had been shot and killed. A group of soldiers decided to march on the police station in the Fourth Ward and secure his release. If the police could assault a model soldier like Baltimore, they reasoned, none of them was safe from abuse. Maj. Kneeland S. Snow, battalion commander, initially discounted the news of impending trouble. Around 8 P.M. Sgt. Vida Henry of I Company confirmed the rumors, and Kneeland ordered the first sergeants to collect all rifles and search the camp for loose ammunition. During this process, a soldier suddenly screamed that a white mob was approaching the camp. Black soldiers rushed into the supply tents, grabbed rifles, and began firing wildly in the direction of supposed mob. The white officers found it impossible to restore order. Sergeant Henry led over 100 armed soldiers toward downtown Houston by way of Brunner Avenue and San Felipe Street and into the Fourth Ward. In their two-hour march on the city, the mutinous blacks killed fifteen whites, including four policemen, and seriously wounded twelve others, one of whom, a policeman, subsequently died. Four black soldiers also died. Two were accidentally shot by their own men, one in camp and the other on San Felipe Street. After they had killed Capt. Joseph Mattes of the Illinois National Guard, obviously mistaking him for a policeman, the blacks began quarreling over a course of action. After two hours, Henry advised the men to slip back into camp in the darkness—and shot himself in the head.

Early next morning, August 24, civil authorities imposed a curfew in Houston. On the twenty-fifth, the army hustled the Third Battalion aboard a train to Columbus, New Mexico. There, seven black mutineers agreed to testify against the others in exchange for clemency. Between November 1, 1917, and March 26, 1918, the army held three separate courts-martial in the chapel at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. The military tribunals indicted 118 enlisted men of I Company for participating in the mutiny and riot, and found 110 guilty. It was wartime, and the sentences were harsh. Nineteen mutinous soldiers were hanged and sixty-three received life sentences in federal prison. One was judged incompetent to stand trial. Two white officers faced courts-martial, but they were released. No white civilians were brought to trial. The Houston Riot of 1917 was one of the saddest chapters in the history of American race relations. It vividly illustrated the problems that the nation struggled with on the home front during wartime.

Camp Logan also developed further notorious attention among the residents of Houston the following year as the locus point of the first widespread local outbreak of the deadly 1918 Spanish Flu. By September 24 of that year over 600 cases had been reported by the US Army surgeons at the camp, who made the fateful decision to send the sick to homes and hospitals in the community to try to protect those soldiers still healthy at the camp. By October 3 doctors reported 48 soldiers from the camp had died from the flu and it had begun to rapidly spread through the city. By October 9 the local newspapers reported that 33 flu related deaths had now occurred in the city and that the Mayor, District Clerk, and 20 police officers had contracted. Flu cases in the city were now reported to be in the thousands and steps were being take to put quarantines in place. Public schools, restaurants, and gatherings were shut down including the Barnum & Bailey Circus and local churches.^{[citation needed]}

In recent years, Camp Logan refers to the neighborhood tucked in to the northeast corner of Memorial Park, bordered by Westcott and Arnot streets, north of Memorial Elementary School.^{[citation needed]}

References

• Buffalo Bayou, An Echo of Houston's Wilderness Beginnings. Linda C. Gorski and Louis F. Aulbach. Camp Logan Logan Riot, August, 1917.
• Spanish Flu in Houston - Part 1 J. R. Gonzales, Houston Chronicle, May 4, 2009.
• Spanish Flu in Houston - Part 2 J. R. Gonzales, Houston Chronicle, May 7, 2009.
• Camp Logan Civic Club

Coordinates: 29°46′17″N 95°25′39″W / 29.771493°N 95.427375°W / 29.771493; -95.427375

Camp Logan National Guard Rifle Range
Zion, Illinois

Camp Logan was an Illinois National Guard Training Facility that operated between 1892 and the early 1970s. The National Guard, in its present state, is a voluntary military organization dedicated to providing protection to civilians during an emergency within the state and augmenting the US Army during crises of greater magnitude. The training provided at Camp Logan covered handling of small weapons, tactical maneuvers, and other military tasks, but it especially excelled at promoting rifle marksmanship.

Historically, the Illinois National Guard grew out of the Illinois Territorial Militia, which provided the manpower against the British and their Indian allies during the War of 1812. After Illinois gained statehood in 1818, the Illinois Militia was formed by state law. Under this act all free white men between ages 18 and 45 were required to join the militia and provide the basic materials for defending the state. This militia was reserved for emergencies and seldom trained.


However, during the Black Hawk War of 1832, 1500 militiamen joined with the Regular Army to combat the Sauk and Fox. Similarly, Illinois contributed militia units for the 1846-1848 Mexican War and later, during the Civil War, the militia ranks swelled with volunteers to fight for the Union.

With no external threats after the Civil War, interest in maintaining a militia dwindled, and in light of increasing unrest in the industrial labor force, the focus shifted to enforcing civil order. The Militia Law of 1877 organized the previously independent militia units into the Illinois National Guard, the voluntary units we know today.


US Naval Rifle Range at Camp Logan, 1917.
(Photo by Mole & Thomas of Chicago)

The Illinois National Guard units trained at their hometown armories throughout most of the year, then attended a yearly encampment with other units. Prior to 1886, these yearly encampments occurred at rented sites, with temporary structures or just tents. In 1866, Camp Lincoln, in Springfield, was purchased and set up as a permanent facility for large group training. Around this time, however, one third of the state’s militia was stationed around Chicago, where the need for quick deployment was deemed to be greatest. To facilitate training for the region, in 1892 the state legislature purchased a 220-acre tract in a desolate area well north of Chicago on the shore of Lake Michigan for construction of a new rifle range and training area. This facility was named Camp Logan after General John Alexander Logan, a Civil War-era politician who raised a southern Illinois volunteer regiment in 1861. An additional 40 acres was purchased in 1899.


Construction of buildings at the base began in 1893. By 1900, there were four regimental barracks, a range office, headquarters office, mess hall, kitchen, tool house, barn, and eight butthouses (the equipment-storage shed incorporated into the earthen/concrete berm or “butt” behind the targets at each distance range).


Utility Buildings
Two key innovations, the echelon target system and Aiken targets, were incorporated into the Camp Logan range around the turn of the 19th - 20th century. These modifications made Camp Logan an outstanding facility. While most US Army and National Guard ranges had successive firing lines located directly behind one another (as did the early range at Camp Logan), this limited training to one squad at a time. The French echelon system installed ca. 1900 at Camp Logan may be the first US adaptation of this system, which places rows of targets at various ranges from a long firing line, allowing many more men to train at the same time from different distances. The Aiken target, developed in the late 1890s by guardsman Col. Robert Aiken at Camp Logan, was a precise action, mechanical moving target that could be raised and lowered much like a double-hung window. It also allowed target operators to mark individual bullet hits rapidly, so that feedback to the shooter and the instructor was almost immediate.

At Camp Logan, targets were erected on ranges of 200, 300, 500, 600, and 1000 yards, oriented toward Lake Michigan. A marksman needed to qualify at each range by achieving a minimum of 40 percent of the possible hit points for that target. After a soldier qualified at the 200 yard range, he would advance to 300, then 500, and on up. After a soldier finished the course at the minimum standard, he would start over and attempt the next higher standard. The highest achievement was “Distinguished Sharpshooter.” In addition to the standard bullseye targets, Camp Logan also had a skirmish range with silhouettes of standing, kneeling, or prone figures that tested a more realistic combination of firing and maneuvering.

The effectiveness of the retooling of the range and quality of instruction are reflected in the high rifle scores received by the Chicago units, which generally outscored downstate units by at least 50 percent.



1000-Yard Butt with Aiken Targets and Butthouse.
(Photo by Robert Rosin ca.1967)
As the amenities at the camp improved, so did its popularity as a meeting place for annual shooting competitions, both military and civilian. From an early date, Regular Army marksmen from nearby Fort Sheridan preferred the rifle range at Camp Logan to their own facilities. Beginning around 1890, guardsmen from Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin joined the Illinois National Guard at Camp Logan to compete for the Washburn Trophy, a traveling trophy that would ultimately reside with the state that won three years running. Illinois won in 1891, 1892, and 1903. This trophy is housed at the Illinois State Military Museum at Camp Lincoln.

Use of the camp by the Illinois National Guard was heavy from 1902 on. It was the preferred training location because live fire could be launched from its artillery pieces and Gatling guns into Lake Michigan; whereas at Camp Lincoln, training was basically restricted to dry firing these weapons. After 1910, attendance during the shooting season, which ran from May 1 to Nov. 1, averaged 16,000 soldiers. During World War I, the nearby Great Lakes Naval Training Station took over Camp Logan to train its overflow of recruits. Several new buildings were constructed at this time.

By 1927, Camp Logan boasted 56 targets, making it the largest rifle range in the state. The Bliss Trophy Rifle Match was held annually at the base during the 1930s, and involved teams from the American Legion, Fort Sheridan, the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, the Officers Reserve Corps, and the Illinois National Guard. From the 1930s into the 1970s, Camp Logan was also used as a weapons training center by the FBI, who set up a separate course for pistol practice at distances of 7 to 70 yards.

Major improvements were made to the facility landscape by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) from 1934 to 1937. The modern road through the camp is built over the WPA road grade and bed and represents just a portion of the original roadway. Other existing WPA constructions include a concrete sidewalk, retaining wall, ditch tiling, cyclone fence, and concrete bridge.


Camp Logan Headquarters
After World War I, National Guard divisions were assigned permanent instructors from the Regular Army. Between 1933 and 1937 Col. George C. Marshall, who would become Secretary of State in 1947 and thereafter devise the Marshall Plan for the economic recovery of Western Europe, was assigned as the senior instructor to Camp Logan. During his tenure he assisted the Illinois National Guard in organizing and conducting the Camp Logan School of Arms for officers in the 33rd Infantry Division. The purpose of this school, which was the only such endeavor in the entire National Guard of the United States, was to teach officers how to train their soldiers in the use of weapons, regularizing methods and emulating instructions taught at the Regular Army’s Infantry School. Instructors were both Regular Army and National Guard personnel. In subsequent years, instruction would be carried out by guard officers who had attended the previous year’s course, creating one of the Guard’s first service schools. The school at Camp Logan was conducted annually until 1940.

During World War II, the Great Lakes Naval Training Station utilized the range at Camp Logan for daytime training of its recruits. Around this time, the base was also occupied by the Illinois Reserve Militia, an organization created to fulfill the Guard’s state emergency mission of disaster relief and maintenance of order whenever the Illinois National Guard was federally activated.

After World War II, training became more restrictive at Camp Logan, due to the development of more powerful weapons and the increasing civilian population around the base. However, the guardsmen were now required to qualify with their rifles once every three years, with the other two years being used for rifle training. The Chicago units were typically deployed to Camp Logan twice a year for rifle and pistol training or qualification. One type of specialty training that developed during this time was sniper and counter-sniper training. Physical improvements continued to be added to the camp after the war, including a sewage plant for the camp and a mess hall. By 1964, the camp had 36 buildings. Camp Logan was closed in the early 1970s.

Two of the ten pre-1970s buildings that exist at Camp Logan today, the caretaker cottage and pumphouse, date from the 1890s. The majority of standing buildings (two garages, headquarters, one tool and two storeroom buildings, one barracks) and the old flagpole are from the 1910s, and only one building (a mess hall) remains from the 1940s-1950s construction period.

The 1890s-1950s buildings and landscape structures form the basis for the 243-acre Camp Logan National Guard Rifle Range Historic District, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) June 9, 2000. The National Register of Historic Places is the Nation’s official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects that are significant in American history, architecture, archaeology, engineering, or culture and therefore worthy of preservation. National Register properties are distinguished by having been documented and evaluated according to uniform standards designed to help state and local governments, Federal agencies, and others identify properties worthy of preservation and of consideration in planning and development decisions. Camp Logan was placed on the NRHP because of its status as the best remaining example of a pre-World War II National Guard training facility in Illinois and because of its role in the evolution of the Illinois National Guard.