Little Falls Directory • Morrison County Record • www . mcrecord . com • 2025 • 41
Camp Ripley
Minnesota Military & Veterans Museum
Camp Ripley is a state-owned 53,000 acre military training center located on the Mississippi River just north of Little Falls .
While primarily a National Guard facility , it provides yearround training for all military service branches and components . In recent years , Minnesota state agencies such as the Department of Natural Resources , Department of Transportation , and Minnesota State Patrol have also come to rely on Camp Ripley ’ s exceptional facilities for their education and training needs .
It was opened to troops in 1931 after an exhaustive search for a Minnesota National Guard training site that was centrally located and well suited for tactical maneuvers . By happy coincidence , the chosen site encompassed the greater part of what had once been old Fort Ripley , a frontier Army post occupied from 1849-1877 , and the new post took its name from the old .
During World War II , the federal government took over Camp Ripley for use as an installation of the Army Service Forces , Seventh Service Command . From July 1942 to October 1943 , thousands of federal troops received basic and advanced training here . Many were assigned to the 960th Air Base Security Battalion or to one of the dozens of Military Police ( Aviation ) Training Companies . The 99th Infantry Battalion ( Sep ), consisting of Norwegian-Americans , was activated at Camp Ripley in August 1942 and grew to 700 men by the time it transferred that fall to Fort Snelling and then to Camp Hale , Colorado , to complete training . There was a band ( the 394th Army Air Force Band ), and in the summer of 1943 Camp Ripley was home to the 173rd Station Hospital . Its
250-bed tent hospital was the only one of this kind in the nation . About 1,000 Soldiers were housed on post over the winter of 1942- 43 , and the numbers grew to over 7,000 the following summer when a Military Police ( Aviation ) Training Center was activated . Camp Ripley had been built in the 1930s as a summer training camp , however , and was poorly equipped for the cold and snow of a northern Minnesota winter . The Army , not wishing to contend with the difficulties caused by its first winter at Camp Ripley , decided in late summer 1943 to discontinue use of the post for wartime training . Nearly all federal troops were transferred out in October 1943 and that winter the post was returned to state control .
In the 70s , heated year-round barracks began to be built to accommodate cold weather training . A vigorous building and renovation effort has been steadily underway ever since , changing Camp Ripley from a summer annual training site for the Minnesota National Guard to a state-of-the-art , year-round military training and education installation for all branches of service , as well as law enforcement personnel .
Construction in the 1980s and 90s was especially heavy , including a 98,700-square foot Post Headquarters / Training Community Center ; 62,000-square foot Troop Issue Subsistence Activity ( TISA ) for food distribution and storage ; major improvements to the post ’ s two aircraft runways ; a regional maintenance training building ; a huge Mobilization and Training Equipment Site ( MATES ) complex providing organizational maintenance for 900 tracked and wheeled vehicles ; a 31,000-square foot Education Center containing 20 classrooms ; and a fully equipped center for medical training and care .
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