Come celebrate Camp Butner’s 75th anniversary on Saturday

The town of Butner will hold a parade and other events on Saturday, Sept. 23, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Camp Butner, the World War II Army training camp that gave life to the town.

A parade of military vehicles will begin at 10 a.m. from A Street and then go up Central Avenue to Gazebo Park, where a commemorative ceremony will begin at 11 a.m. There will also be reenactments and displays of Butner history in the park and guided bus tours of the town at 12:20, 1:30 and 2:30 p.m.

The Camp Butner Museum, a collection of shells, photos, maps, documents and other artifacts from the camp, will open after the ceremony in the Soldiers Memorial Sports Arena at 416 24th St.

Camp Butner officially opened in August 1942, six months after the War Department began acquiring land in former farming communities in southwestern Granville County. The 40,000-acre training camp was designed to house and train 40,000 soldiers and included a hospital for wounded soldiers and a prison camp for captured Italians and Germans.

The camp closed in January 1947. More than 20,000 acres were sold back to farmers, while more than 13,000 acres, including the streets and buildings that make up the town, went to the state of North Carolina. It established several institutions at Butner, including a N.C. National Guard training base, an agricultural research farm and a psychiatric hospital.

For more information about Saturday’s celebration, including suggestions on where to park, go to www.butnernc.org/events.

This story was originally published September 21, 2017 at 10:30 AM with the headline "Come celebrate Camp Butner’s 75th anniversary on Saturday."