Camp Reynolds

Camp Reynolds, formerly known as Camp Shenango, was a World War II Military Personnel Replacement Depot located on what is now Transfer, Pennsylvania in Northwestern Pennsylvania. In 1994, the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission placed a historical marker there to note the historic importance of the location.

The story of how nearly 3,300 acres of rich Pymatuning Township, Mercer County, Pennsylvania farmland were transformed almost overnight into the largest cantonment of its kind in the whole of the United States at that time has to be one of the more intriguing tales to come out of the Second World War for Mercer Countians in general and for Reynolds area residents in particular. It is a narrative which for the most part has been told before, but which certainly is worthy of repetition on this golden anniversary of the beginning of that never to be forgotten event.

In about six short months there sprang from the Pymatuning potato fields three miles south of Greenville, Pennsylvania a vast military installation which would become the parade ground for a million servicemen bound for the European theater of operations.

The original Camp Shenango, which later was to become Camp Reynolds, was unlike any other military depot at that time, not only in formation but also in construction. Its impressive array of service clubs, gymnasiums, chapels, libraries, theaters, hospital, post exchanges, guest facilities, etc. rivaled those of any post in the country. Its purpose was to receive, process, and forward both officers and enlisted men. Individual stay depended on the branch of operations and the demand for replacements. From Shenango-Reynolds the Europe-bound troops went directly to East Coast ports of embarkation and left immediately for overseas destinations. But all that is getting ahead of the story. Toward the end of the third week in June 1942 articles appearing in the area newspapers hinted of plans for the establishment of "a large project" south of Greenville, the nature of which was regarded as a military secret. Actually the media had a fairly good idea of what was going on but had been operating under voluntary censorship since the Attack on Pearl Harbor six months earlier.

...
Wikipedia