Adair Village

Camp Adair was first a World War II military base. Then part was closed and part became student housing for Oregon State University. Then the Air Force took over and made it a radar station. That closed with the passing of the cold war. I remember visiting the Station on a field trip while in high school. The radar display room was a dazzling sight for me. The whole room full of monitors showed aircraft flying all over the northwest. I was not aware of it then, but there was not a computer in the room! That would have been about 1962. I also remember that the only window in the whole building was in the elevator. If the operator stopped the elevator at a certain place between floors it lined up with another small window in the wall and one could see the outside world. The view was limited, about six inches square as I recall. Those were cold war times and one had to be ready for a Russian attack! Adair Village incorporated as a normal city in 1976.

Historical Note: There were four firehouses in the main camp, one in each quadrant, and #5 was in the "Hospital Hill" area . The part facing the front of the photo had "Firehouse #5 Cafe" for a while, but is now closed. The back section where the fire trucks were parked, is a convenience store. After the Army trained the four Divisions there, the main camp was used as a prisoner-of-war camp for German and Italian prisoners. The Hospital was taken over by the Navy for the treatment of its' wounded. Then part of the hospital wards were converted into apartments for students at Oregon State College under the G.I. Bill. Then the Air Force came in. As part of the Air Force SAGE program, they started to build a BOMARC missile site in the old camp. As the BOMARC was quickly declared obsolete, the project was abandoned. Historical information supplied by Gary Richards, Adair historian.

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