Nps Form 10-900 - National Register Of Historic Places Registration Form Page 9
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22United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
NPS Form 10-900
OMB No. 1024-0018
Bridge No. 4969
Morrison County, MN
Name of Property
County and State
historic context “State Owned Buildings: The Development of Camp Ripley, 1929-1945” (Hess,
Roise and Company 1994).
______________________________________________________________________________
Narrative Statement of Significance (Provide at least one paragraph for each area of
significance.)
When the National Defense Act of June 4, 1920, was passed to amend the 1916 act of the same
name, it reorganized the National Guard as one of three formal components of the U.S. Army,
the other two being the Regular Army and the Organized Reserves. It additionally apportioned
these components into six infantry divisions, one Regular Army, two National Guard, and three
Organized Reserve, within each of nine corps areas within the continental United States. This
reorganization “necessitated a complete new allotment of troops and allocation of units to the
National Guard” (Rhinow 1922:6), which in Minnesota created an increase of 1,427 National
Guard members between the passing of the act and the end of 1922 (Rhinow 1922:10). With the
promotion of the Guard in the nation’s military system, the training of its members in Minnesota,
as in the rest of the country, became “in contrast to earlier practice. . . a major peacetime task of
the Regular Army” (Stewart 2005:57).
At the time that the Defense Act was passed, Minnesota was ill-equipped to handle the needs it
engendered. The Minnesota National Guard’s first and only permanent training ground before
that point was Camp Lakeview, a 189-acre property, 160 acres of which had been offered for
lease by Lake City in 1891 (Minnesota Adjutant General’s Office 1940:11). The limitations of
Camp Lakeview were such that field training was primarily close-order drill exercises, with
lesser extended-order drill exercises and limited-distance artillery firing. The National Guard
was forced to discontinue the latter, already insufficient as a training exercise, after 1907 because
it was determined unsuitable to the presence of the nearby Chicago Milwaukee and St. Paul
Railway right of way; artillery training of Minnesota Guard members was then transferred to
Wisconsin and Michigan (Little Falls Daily Transcript 1929a).
In his 1922 annual report, Minnesota’s Adjutant General, Walter Rhinow (1922:19), noted:
Owing to the changes made by the Federal Government in the size of the
organizations of the National Guard, [Camp Lakeview] has proven inadequate to
a marked degree. It is not possible to encamp more than a single regiment there at
any one time, and the State has been compelled to secure the use of the
reservation at Fort Snelling. This latter camp site is inadequate in every way, but
owing to the constant use by the Regular Army, the Citizens Military Training
Camps, and the various units of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, the
activities of the National Guard are curtailed to a point incompatible with the
requirements of field training.
Section 8 page 9
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