THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



441 



to make a boardwalk four feet wide — 

 runners and all — from Palm Beach to 

 Bagdad via Bering Strait and the Arctic 

 Circle ; had it not witnessed the move- 

 ment to their sites of enough material 

 and supplies to load a string of cars 

 reaching from Portland, Maine, to Port- 

 land, Oregon, via Boston, Cleveland, Chi- 

 cago, Minneapolis, and Spokane. 



Consider a weekly pay-roll twice as 

 large as the monthly pay-roll at Panama 

 when the canal work was at high tide, 

 and paid off in two hours, where three 

 days were required to pay off the big 

 ditch force. Reflect upon the fact that 

 the expenditure for the 16 cantonments 

 for the month of August was $52,000,- 

 000 — nearly nine tons of gold, or more 

 than was ever paid out in' a whole year 

 on the Panama Canal, until now the 

 world's greatest undertaking! 



IMPORTANT DETAILS CONSIDERED IN THE 

 SELECTION OF CAMP SITES 



There were many things to consider in 

 the choice of locations. Each camp had 

 to be contiguous to a city, in order to in- 

 sure a labor and material market within 

 reach, opportunities for camp leave to 

 mitigate the tedium of the military grind, 

 and satisfactory railroad facilities. The 

 topography of the surrounding country, 

 the available sources of an ample water 

 supply, and the problem of drainage were 

 also important considerations. 



Some of the sites departed just enough 

 from level to insure good drainage, and 

 for the most part were fine and pros- 

 perous farms, as at Camp Grant. Rock- 

 ford, 111. ; Camp Sherman, Chillicothe, 

 Ohio, and Camp Dix, Wrightstown, N. J. 

 Others were covered with undergrowth 

 and scrub forest, as at Camp Devens, 

 Ayer, Mass. ; Camp Upton, Yaphank, 

 N. Y., and Camp Pike, Little Rock, Ark. 

 Others were on military reservations, as 

 at Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kans., and 

 Camp Travis, Fort Sam Houston, Tex. 

 At Camp Lee, Petersburg, Va., 25 farms 

 were occupied. At Camp Jackson, Co- 

 lumbia, S. C, a negro church had to be 

 razed and several old tobacco barns 

 burned. 



With the sites selected and 160 of the 

 biggest sawmills in the United States 

 turning logs into planks, joists, rafters, 



and studding at an incredible speed, the 

 cities themselves were ready to begin ris- 

 ing from the ground. 



The railroads of the country, already 

 sore pressed for rolling stock, already 

 taxed to what seemed well-nigh the limit 

 of war-time demands on peace-time fa- 

 cilities, set aside 30,000 cars for canton- 

 ment material transportation, and vast 

 quantities of lumber were moving east, 

 west, north, and south to the camp sites. 

 In a single day there was unloaded at 

 Des Moines 1,890,000 board feet of lum- 

 ber, the equivalent of 300 miles of 12- 

 inch boards. 



One day a one-story office building, 

 some trenching machines, some teams and 

 trucks, and a chaos of materials, and in 

 48 hours a respectable village. In two 

 weeks the village had grown to a town, 

 and in two months the town became a city. 



How the work marched along may be 

 told in the story of Camp Funston. On 

 June 20 a contract for the building of 

 the cantonment was let. For the next 

 15 days there was little done, because the 

 site was not definitely chosen. There 

 were four available sites on the Fort Riley 

 Reservation, and a civilian board was 

 named to select one of them. The de- 

 cision was not made until July 5. 



Meanwhile the local construction quar- 

 termaster, having an inspiration that the 

 site which was finally chosen would be 

 the one, as well as a feeling that taking 

 a chance was better than living out a de- 

 lay, told the contractor to erect build- 

 ings for the quartermaster, the field au- 

 ditor, and the contractor. These were 

 ready when the site was fixed, and were 

 the only buildings standing on July 5. 

 when the real work began. By July 10 

 the Union Pacific Railroad had a siding 

 completed two miles long, and later in- 

 stalled more than eight miles additional.. 



WORKMEN QUARTERED IN CAMPS THEY . 

 WERE BUILDING 



The buildings followed the standard 

 plans from Washington, which specified 

 that all northern cantonment structures 

 have outside walls and ceilings lined with 

 paper, and that they be wainscoted and 

 lined inside with wall board ; all lavatory 

 buildings should have concrete floors and 

 foundations (see also pages 425-427) 



