The Desert Training Center (DTC), also known as California–Arizona Maneuver Area (CAMA), was a World War II training facility established in the Mojave Desert and Sonoran Desert, largely in Southern California and Western Arizona in 1942. Its mission was to train United States Army and Army Air Forces units and personnel to live and fight in the desert, to test and develop suitable equipment, and to develop tactical doctrines, techniques and training methods. It was a key training facility for units engaged in combat during the 1942–1943 North African campaign. It stretched from the outskirts of Pomona, California eastward to within 50 miles of Phoenix, Arizona, southward to the suburbs of Yuma, Arizona and northward into the southern tip of Nevada.

History

This simulated theater of operation was the largest military training ground in the history of military maneuvers. A site near Shavers Summit (now known as Chiriaco Summit) between Indio and Desert Center, was selected as the headquarters of the DTC. The site, called Camp Young after the first commandant of the Army War College and the first Army Chief of Staff Samuel Baldwin Marks Young, was the world's largest army post. Major General George S. Patton Jr. came to Camp Young as the first commanding general of the DTC. As a native of southern California, Patton knew the area well from his youth and from having participated in army maneuvers in the Mojave Desert in the 1930s. His first orders were to select other areas within the desert that would be suitable for the large-scale maneuvers necessary to prepare American soldiers for combat against the German Afrika Korps in the North African desert. Patton and his advanced team designated various locations within the area where tent camps would be built. The camps were situated so that each unit could train individually without interfering with the other. Airfields, hospitals, supply depots and sites for other support services were selected as was a corps maneuvering area. The plan was that each division and or major unit would train in its own area, and near the end of its training period would participate in a corps (two divisions or more) exercise in the corps maneuvering area at Palen Pass. Upon completion of the corps exercise, the trained units would leave the DTC, and new units would arrive to begin their training and the process repeated. By March 1943, the North African campaign was in its final stages and the primary mission of the DTC had changed. By the middle of 1943, the troops who originally came for desert training maneuvers were now deployed worldwide. Therefore, to reflect that change in mission, the name of the center was changed to the California-Arizona Maneuver Area (C-AMA or CAMA). The CAMA was to serve as a theater of operations to train combat troops, service units and staff under conditions similar to those which might be encountered overseas. The CAMA was enlarged to include both a communications zone and combat zone, approximately 350 miles wide and 250 miles long. Due to a severe deficit of service units beginning in the winter of 1943, it was decided that maneuvers in CAMA would cease as of 15 April 1944, with internal operations continuing until 1 May, after which the center would be officially discontinued.

Lineage

Facilities

Army Divisional Camps

Army Depots

Army Airfields

Hospitals

Mohave Maneuver Area C

In May 1964 part of the former Desert Training Center was reacquired for the purpose of Exercise Desert Strike. The former Mohave Maneuver Area C was included in this area and used as part of the training ground for the two-week exercise. The exercise had large maneuvers and some river crossing training. Mohave Maneuver Area C was 781,452 acres located in Mohave County, Arizona.

Present day sites

Much of the training area is preserved in Mojave National Preserve and Mojave Trails National Monument, along with various other state and federal protected lands. Most of the sites can be visited, but some are difficult to reach. In most cases the only things that remain at the camp sites are streets, sidewalks, building foundations, patterns of hand-laid rocks for various purposes and trash dumps. Monuments have been erected at some of the camp sites and there are areas within CAMA that are fenced off with danger signs warning of unexploded ordnance. The General George S. Patton Memorial Museum is located near the former entrance of Camp Young.

California Historical Landmark

California Historical Landmarks Marker at Desert Training Center sites reads: Camp Pilot Knob – Imperial Camp Young – Riverside Camp Granite – Riverside Camp Coxcomb – Riverside Camp Iron Mountain – San Bernardino Camp Clipper – San Bernardino Camp Ibis – San Bernardino