This gate is a welcoming glimpse of the Camp Toccoa at Currahee Project, a mission started about 10 years ago to memorialize the 5,000 “Toccoa Men” who trained at this base 5 miles outside of Toccoa, GA, for the famous D-Day invasion of WWII.
Camp Toccoa was built in the 1930s under FDR’s administration. In 1942, 5000 men were sent to the base to train as paratroopers. According to the project website, the camp housed “17,000 soldiers from 501st, 506th, 511th, and 517th Parachute Infantry Division; the 295th Ordnance Heavy Maintenance and the 38th Signal Construction Battalion” who trained for deployment in WWII, and then afterward became a German POW camp before finally closing at the end of WWII.
The base was “virtually erased” when it closed, except for one single building which stands alone.
Today, the base is owned by the Stephens County Historical Society, and it’s more recognizable as the same Camp Toccoa depicted in the 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers.
Volunteers from Toccoa have completed phase 1 of an ambitious restoration project, involving recreating the camp gate, bathhouse, barracks, building a pavilion, restoring the last remaining original base building, and creating a display for an actual C-47 aircraft, a plane model used by the Toccoa men on D-Day.
If you stop by the base now, you might see veteran gatherings, visiting reenactors, or active military groups staying on-site.
The base is open on weekends for visitors to hike/run up Currahee, take a guided tour, and explore the Camp Toccoa Museum in the Regimental Headquarters. It’s also available via request for weekday visits or a variety of special events.
As impressive and inspiring as this work is, these volunteers have even greater things planned, and they would welcome any contributions.
