Qualla: Camp Peary

Camp Peary: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SchuminWeb, CC BY-SA 3.0. The towns of Magruder and Bigler's Mill no longer appear on any Virginia map, but their roads and buildings are still there - behind a perimeter fence that has been closed to the public since 1951. In 1942, the U.S. Navy needed land for a Seabee training base and took roughly 9,000 acres on the north side of the Virginia Peninsula in York County. Every resident of both towns had to leave. Magruder was a traditionally African-American community, established for freedmen after the Civil War and named, with bitter irony, for Confederate General John B. Magruder. Many displaced families relocated to the Grove community on U.S. Route 60 in James City County, where residents from another area had already been uprooted during World War I to create what is now Naval Weapons Station Yorktown. The Navy named its new base for Arctic explorer Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary. What happened inside would transform the property into one of America's most famous open secrets.

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Image: SchuminWeb | CC BY-SA 3.0

Camp Peary: The Men Who Built Everything

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Etombari, CC BY-SA 3.0. The initial Seabee recruits of World War II were not ordinary soldiers. They were the men who had built Boulder Dam, America's highways, and New York City skyscrapers - civilian construction workers joining the Navy's new construction battalions. Camp Peary opened on November 3, ...

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Image: Etombari | CC BY-SA 3.0

Camp Peary: Ghosts from Lost U-Boats

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Menzies from Morgantown, West Virginia, CC BY-SA 2.0. When the Seabees departed, a different kind of resident arrived. A portion of Camp Peary became a detention center for German prisoners of war, and these were not ordinary POWs. Many were Kriegsmarine crewmen pulled from captured U-boats and ships that the German high command bel...

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Image: Tim Menzies from Morgantown, West Virginia | CC BY-SA 2.0

Camp Peary: Five Quiet Years, Then the Fence Went Up

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Department of Defense. Department of the Navy. Bureau of Naval Personnel. 9/18/1947-1982, Public domain. The Navy vacated Camp Peary in 1946, and for five years it served as a Virginia state forestry and game reserve. A reservoir built on the upper reaches of Queen's Creek to supply the base's water needs was handed over to the City of Williamsburg, becoming Waller Mill Reservoir an...

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Image: Department of Defense. Department of the Navy. Bureau of Naval Personnel. 9/18/1947-1982 | Public domain

Camp Peary: The Farm

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ser Amantio di Nicolao at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Camp Peary is widely known as 'The Farm,' a training facility operated by the Central Intelligence Agency for the purpose of training clandestine officers from the CIA's Directorate of Operations, the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Clandestine Service, and other intelligen...

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Image: Ser Amantio di Nicolao at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0