ARCO, Idaho — Far away in the eastern Idaho desert, we explored a canal just a few feet from the road where we found thousands of rusted medicine bottles, hand-painted mugs, fine china, original glass soda bottles, children's toys and even a birdcage.
We walked past beer bottles, antique light fixtures, tin cans, a rusty hand mirror and a washboard that had been lying here for over 80 years.
Men, women and children lived here during World War II and the momentous events that defined the war, including the Holocaust and the atomic bombing of Japan.
Today we can learn a little about their lives as this pile of rubbish has remained largely untouched for many years.
But why is there a World War II trash pile in the middle of the Idaho desert? And what does a mile-long pile of trash have to do with Idaho's atomic history?
To do this, let's go back in time.
In the early 1940s, tensions were rising rapidly in the run-up to World War II. The U.S. Navy was rushing to train sailors, build and test weapons, and build support facilities to prepare for war.
According to Susan M. Stacey's book “Proof of Principle,” which details the history of the Idaho National Laboratory, the Navy needed an inland area with plenty of space and enough flat land to transport large weapons systems.
“The Pacific Fleet needed a place pretty close to the West Coast where they could recondition and basically refurbish their gun barrels, because they only had so many rounds that could come out of them,” says John Grams, project scientist for Idaho National Laboratory's Nuclear Accelerator Innovation Gateway, “so they built a facility in Pocatello called the Pocatello Naval Weapons Plant.”
The Naval Ordnance Plant opened in Pocatello on April 1, 1942. The area already contained the Union Pacific Railroad's terminal, the largest in the United States, and was located on a transcontinental highway.
In this undated photo, a gun is tested at ARCO Naval Proving Grounds in Idaho. (Photo courtesy of Idaho National Laboratory)
“These guns were brought over from battleships such as the USS Missouri and the USS Wisconsin, and their rotating armored turrets housed the Navy's most powerful 16-inch guns, which helped win the Pacific War,” Stacey said. “Repeated firing of the guns eroded the barrels and wore down the rifling, reducing the accuracy of the guns.”
To repair it, the Pocatello factory removed the gun's worn inner barrel and relined it with new metal.
Eventually, the Navy realized they needed to ship these weapons somewhere to test them. Again, they needed a large, flat area, and that's what they found in Arco, 65 miles from the Pocatello Naval Weapons Plant.
Arco Naval Testing Station
“They had this huge open space, 900 square miles between the east and west mountain ranges,” Grams says, “and they decided to put a naval facility here to test fire these guns.”
Nine miles wide and 36 miles long, the Arco Naval Proving Grounds was established in 1942. Just a few hundred feet from where weapons were tested during World War II, it was where Navy families lived, worked and thrived.
Because families lived at the testing site, the Navy divided the area into a residential area and a testing area.
Families lived in the neighborhoods, Marines organized baseball teams, women participated in sewing clubs, and adults entertained the community with twice-weekly movie nights.
At Naval Proving Grounds, Idaho, October 1951. (Photo: Proof of Principle)
“On the other side of the tracks, there used to be a train shed,” says Libby Cook, an architectural historian at the Idaho National Laboratory. “They would pull the train out, pull down the screen, put in benches and people could watch the latest movies.”
Eventually, the town was given its own name, “Scoville,” after Commander John A. Scoville, who was in charge of construction of the Pocatello Works and Proving Grounds.
“The Navy built their buildings with an emphasis on permanence, planting trees and shrubs on the grounds. The northernmost residence, with its matching garage, was reserved for the commander,” Stacey says. “Beyond the barracks were kennels for the Marine patrol dogs and a well-stocked commissary, which the civilians called 'the store.'”
The town's children went to school, played at the water tower, and were even scolded by Marines when they misbehaved.
“The students traveled to school in Arco, 17 miles away, in packed gunmetal gray buses, sometimes accompanied by Marines if the boys got too unruly,” Stacey says. “In typical military fashion, the buses stopped in front of the Marine barracks one day each year, where no child could escape the dreaded 'tick shot,' a booster shot to prevent Rocky Mountain spotted fever.”
Overall, life was normal, with many families living close together.
“There's a great photo of a woman named Pat Gibson with her horses. They had livestock and animals here,” Cook says. “There was another family who had a little dairy cow just north of the Naval Test Station that provided milk for families in town.”
Read the full story at EastIdahoNews.com.
