Fort Pickett

Fort Pickett, is a Virginia Army National Guard installation, located near the town of Blackstone, Virginia. Home of the Army National Guard Maneuver Training Center, Fort Pickett is named for the United States Army officer and Confederate General George Pickett.

Beginnings

Late in 1941, as war drew closer to America’s shores, a team of Army surveyors visited the site of a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp near the small rural town of Blackstone, Virginia. There they found enough land, water and other resources needed to establish a post large enough to simultaneously train more than one infantry division. The site also offered easy railroad access to both mountain and coastal training sites. By December, 1941, 45,867 acres (185.62 km²) of land in Nottoway, Dinwiddie, Lunenburg and Brunswick Counties were acquired and cleared to prepare for construction of the first buildings.

Elements of the Virginia National Guard had their first taste of what is now Fort Pickett on Dec. 6-7 when the 1st Battalion, 116th Infantry, camped here on the way back to its home station at Fort Meade, Maryland, having completed a series of war games in North Carolina.