Sharing Fort Drum’s legacy

By William Kates

updated 3:47 p.m. ET July 16, 2007

FORT DRUM, N.Y. - Just about every soldier in the 10th Mountain Division can tell you it has been America’s busiest Army unit since its reactivation 22 years ago.

About how 10th Mountain Division troops are in the front lines fighting against al-Qaida insurgents in Iraq. And how the division routed the Taliban from the Shah-e-Kot mountains in Afghanistan during the early phases of the war on terror.

Most even know about the daring rescue of the ambushed Army Rangers from Mogadishu in 1993 — a feat chronicled in the best-selling book and movie “Black Hawk Down.”

But few can detail the division’s exploits during World War II, and fewer still how the division was born as an alpine fighting force in the mountains of Colorado or why it now calls upstate New York its home.

Fort Drum’s new Heritage Center is now providing those answers.

“Military history is one of the great educational and training tools for any military organization.

The Heritage Center will end up becoming the focal point for that,” said Douglas Cubbison, a retired Army major and former cultural resources manager at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who is now the division’s historian.

Up until now, the legacy-rich division’s historical collection, at least part of it, was displayed nondescriptly in one of the wooden buildings left over from World War II when the post was known as Pine Camp.

“It was built as a temporary building. It’s gotten crowded and cramped. We were so constrained there we could barely handle a small family if they wanted to visit. Now we can bring in a tour bus,” Cubbison said.

The new 3,000-square-foot museum, which opened in April, is located in part of a former enlisted man’s club. The renovated club also has a gift shop and houses the newly opened USO center and cafe.

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“There are soldiers serving now that have no concept of the history of the division,” said Kent Bolke, the museum’s curator. “We don’t want that story to be forgotten.”

Educating soldiers is the center’s primary mission but it’s also intended to be a link to the surrounding civilian community. The museum is free and open to the public.

While it may seem remote and removed in today’s contemporary world, Fort Drum is located in an area that has held strategic importance through history. For American Indians, it held key trading and hunting trails; for colonial European powers, the area was vital to control of the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes.

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Nearby Sackets Harbor was one of young America’s most important military installations during the War of 1812. After the war, the Army built Madison Barracks there, serving as an outpost and one of its principal training centers — Gen. Ulysses S. Grant trained there — until it was closed in 1947.

In 1906, Madison Barracks needed a summer training area and designated Pine Plains near Watertown for the task. Over time, Pine Plains became Camp Hughes, and then Pine Camp and then Camp Drum — after the World War I-era First Army commander, Gen. Hugh A. Drum.
The museum is divided into four sections to tell its stories.

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