24/7 Biohazard and Crime Scene Cleanup in Camp Swift, TX

Camp Swift is a census-designated place in Bastrop County that began as a United States Army training base built in 1942 on about 56,000 acres north of Bastrop, named for Major General Eben Swift.

The camp was built at remarkable speed: a $25 million contract signed in January 1942 required completion in 108 working days, and roughly 2,700 buildings went up — though none of the World War II buildings survive on the site today.

Camp Swift was one of the largest Army training and transshipment camps in Texas: more than 300,000 men and women trained there during World War II, and at its peak it held some 90,000 soldiers.

The 95th, 97th and 102nd Infantry Divisions and the famed 10th Mountain Division all trained at Camp Swift, which also ran the only nurses' combat training program in Texas.

Thousands of German prisoners of war were also held at Camp Swift during the war, even as tens of thousands of American troops trained around them.

One piece of the original camp survives far from Bastrop: Camp Swift's gymnasium was sold after the war and moved to Whitney, Texas, where the local school district still uses it.

The camp went inactive on June 30, 1946, and control passed from the U.S. Army to the State of Texas in December 1948; it later became a Texas National Guard training site.

Since 2007 Camp Swift has been home to the 136th Regiment (Combat Arms) and the Texas National Guard Training Center of Excellence, with rifle and pistol ranges, an airborne drop zone, helicopter landing sites and a land navigation course.

The surrounding Camp Swift CDP had a population of 7,943 at the 2020 census, up 24% from 6,383 in 2010, with about 2,143 households — and the community first appeared as a census-designated place only in 1990.