Located on around 60,000 acres in Wisconsin, Fort McCoy was created in 1909 as an army training center. In the beginning the area was known as Camp Emory Upton and Camp Robinson. The name was shortened to Fort McCoy in 1926. In the 1930s, another 45,000 acres of land was added to the army installation. Units from across the United States used the army base for training during World War 2. It was also used briefly as a POW camp for prisoners of war. After WW2 it was deactivated for a while, but it came back to life during the Korean War until it was again deactivated in 1953.
It wasn't until 1973 that it was decided to make it a training center and it was reactivated. Today, around 100,000 soldiers train at the army base each and every year. It operates currently as a Total Force Training Center, which means many soldiers go through here as part of their training. Many are happy that it was stopped from becoming a large landfill in the 1960s before it was decided to reopen it as a training facility.