December 22, 2012

Fort Chaffee, just outside of Fort Smith (Sebastian County) and Barling (Sebastian County) has served the United States as an army training camp, a prisoner-of-war camp, and a refugee processing center. In the twenty-first century, 66,000 acres are used by the Arkansas National Guard as a training facility, with the Arkansas Air National Guard using the fort’s Razorback Range for target practice. Many of the World War II-era buildings, some of which are shown here in this photo from 2009, still stand but are in rapidly deteriorating condition.