Fort Harrison State Park, A Century of Service
Near Indianapolis, Indiana
The rolling wooded land northeast of Indianapolis that is now Fort Harrison State Park was an active Army post for nearly a century. President Theodore Roosevelt established Fort Benjamin Harrison in nineteen oh three, named for Indiana's own President Benjamin Harrison. The fort trained combat officers in World War One, housed a Civilian Conservation Corps headquarters during the Depression, served as a World War Two induction center, and held prisoner-of-war camps for German and Italian soldiers.
After the Cold War ended, the Army closed the base in the early nineteen nineties. Indiana converted the land into a state park, which opened in nineteen ninety-six. The grounds still carry traces of the military era in their formal tree plantings, historic brick buildings, and the eighteen-hole golf course on the old post grounds.
