Fort Knox

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The U.S. Bullion Depository at Ft. Knox.

Fort Knox is a United States Army post in Kentucky south of Louisville and north of Elizabethtown, Kentucky. It holds the U.S. Army Armor Center, the U.S. Army Armor School and the U.S. Army Recruiting Command. It is also the site of the U.S. Bullion Depository and the Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor (established 1949), both located on the army post.

The base covers parts of Bullitt, Hardin, and Meade Counties and extends over 109,054 acres (441 km²) and holds around 32,000 people daily. Fortifications were not constructed at the site until 1861, during the Civil War when Fort Duffield was founded. The area was contested by both Union and Confederate forces. After the war the site fell into disuse. The area was revived for military operations in 1918, 10,000 acres (40 km²) near to the village of Stithton were leased to the government and a training center was established on the site in January 1918. The new camp was named after Henry Knox, a general of artillery during the American Revolutionary War and the country's first Secretary of War. The camp was extended by the purchase of a further 40,000 acres (162 km²) in June, 1918 and construction properly began in July 1918. The building program was reduced following the end of the war and reduced further following cuts to the army in 1921 after the National Defense Act of 1920. The camp was greatly reduced and became a semi-permanent training center.

In 1931 a small force of the mechanized cavalry was assigned to Camp Knox to use it as a training site. The camp was turned into a permanent garrison in January 1932 and re-named Fort Knox, the 1st Cavalry Regiment arrived later in the month to become the 1st Cavalry Regiment (Mechanized). In 1936 the 1st was joined by the 13th to become the 7th Cavalry Brigade (Mechanized). The site quickly became the centre for mechanization tactics and doctrine. The success of the German mechanized units at the start of World War II were a major impetus to operations at the fort. A new Armored Force was established in July 1940 with its headquarters at Fort Knox with the 1st Cavalry becoming the 1st Armored Division. The Armored Force School and the Armored Force Replacement Center were also sited at Fort Knox in October, 1940, and their successors remain located there today. The site was expanded to cope with its new role. By 1943 there were 3,820 buildings on 106,861 acres (432 km²).

The United States Department of the Treasury has maintained the U.S. Bullion Depository on the post since 1937. This facility is operated by the Treasury Department and is independent of the Army's operations there. However, it is likely that the post's security forces would assist the Treasury Department's security staff if needed.

Fort Knox is one of the places that the Army conducts Basic Combat Training and it is home to Army ROTC Leader's Training Course.

Fort Knox in popular culture

Cinema

• The 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger featured Fort Knox at the center of its plot, with Bond attempting to foil a scheme to detonate a nuclear device there and cripple the country's economy. This was before the United States dollar ceased to be backed by the gold standard in 1971. [link]

• Portions of the 1981 comedy film Stripes were filmed at Fort Knox, making use of older World War II-era barracks to simulate a base in Czechoslovakia. The majority of those barracks have since been torn down, although some remain and are used today for urban training.
• The film adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard's novel Battlefield Earth featured Fort Knox in the future. The gold in the Bullion Reserve is still intact and is used by the captured humans to meet the quotas of the Psychlonian overseers when they demand gold be mined.

Conspiracy Theories

• A popular and recurring conspiracy theory, as alleged by Edward Durrell, Tom Valentine and others, claims that most of the gold in Fort Knox was sent to London in the late 1960s by Lyndon Johnson. [link] [link] [link] In response, on September 23, 1974, Senator Walter Huddleston of Kentucky, eight congressmen, and about one hundred members of the news media toured the Vault and opened various cells and doors, each filled with gold. Radio reporter Bill Evans, when asked if it seemed like the gold might have been moved in just for the visit, replied that "all I can say is that I saw gold there" and that it seemed like it was always there. Additionally, audits of the gold by the General Accounting Office (in cooperation with the United States Mint and the United States Customs Service in 1974 and the Treasury Department from 1975-81 found no discrepancies between the reported and actual amounts of gold at the Depository. [link]. Approximately ten percent of the bullion is audited annually to ensure the amount and purity matches official records. The theory continues to persist, however.

See also

• Fort Knox Bullion Depository
• List of attractions and events in Louisville

External links

• [US Army Armor Center, Fort Knox, KY]
• [Satellite photo of the Fort Knox Bullion Depository, click to enlarge]
• [Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor (at Fort Knox)]
• [Fort Knox history]

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