Qualla: Camp Wadsworth

Camp Wadsworth: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Headquarters, 27th Division (New York, NY), creator., Public domain. On July 4, 1917 -- Independence Day -- a Spartanburg landowner signed over 2,000 acres of wooded South Carolina plateau to the city. Two days later, the mayor handed that land to the federal government. Within weeks, thousands of civilian workers were clearing trees, laying water pipes, and erecting temporary warehouses under a two-month construction deadline. The camp that rose from that red clay was named for James S. Wadsworth, a New York brigadier general killed at the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864. Camp Wadsworth would exist for barely twenty months, but in that compressed span it would train an entire National Guard division for the trenches of France, witness one of the war's sharpest racial confrontations, and launch some of the conflict's most decorated soldiers into combat.

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Image: Headquarters, 27th Division (New York, NY), creator. | Public domain

Camp Wadsworth: Tents on a Southern Plateau

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. The War Department's plan to expand the Army for World War I called for 32 new training centers -- 16 for the drafted National Army, 16 for the National Guard. National Army camps got heated barracks; National Guard camps, needed faster because guardsmen could mobilize sooner tha...

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Image: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided | Public domain

Camp Wadsworth: The 27th Division Takes Shape

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Harper & Brothers, Public domain. By the end of September 1917, every unit of the New York National Guard's 6th Division -- soon federalized as the 27th Division under Major General John F. O'Ryan -- had assembled at Camp Wadsworth. Training ran the full spectrum: individual drill, bayonet practice, and unit-leve...

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Image: Harper & Brothers | Public domain

Camp Wadsworth: The 369th and the Color Line

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mathew Benjamin Brady, Public domain. The most charged episode at Camp Wadsworth involved the 15th New York Infantry Regiment -- African-American soldiers led by white officers -- later federalized as the 369th Infantry Regiment. Local Spartanburg leaders had been assured no Black soldiers would train there. When the...

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Image: Mathew Benjamin Brady | Public domain

Camp Wadsworth: A Constellation of Soldiers

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. Camp Wadsworth's roster reads like a cross-section of early twentieth-century American life. Hamilton Fish III served as an officer in the 369th and later became a longtime congressman from New York. Cornelius Vanderbilt III, scion of America's wealthiest family, served in the 22...

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Camp Wadsworth: Vanished into Suburbia

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. The Armistice of November 11, 1918, sealed Camp Wadsworth's fate. Beginning in February 1919, the War Department conducted salvage operations, redistributing usable equipment to posts that remained open. Buildings were sold; purchasers hauled them to new locations across the coun...

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Image: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided | Public domain