Just south of Washington DC lies a 15,000-acre oasis of piedmont forest that, despite being less than an hour from the nation’s capital, feels like another planet. Every summer, the park’s tall trees and meandering streams welcome thousands of visitors, including hundreds of summer campers who spend their days hiking, learning archery, and making friendship bracelets. Summers have gone on like this for nearly 100 years, with one short deviation. During World War II, the trees and streams played host to a very different kind of “summer camp,” one where the cabins were filled with campers who learned how to make explosives, crack codes, and strangle people with piano wire.
First There Was a Forest
Once part of an expansive forest that covered most of eastern North America, Prince William Forest was first inhabited by members of the Algonquin-speaking people over 8,000 years ago. They called the area Chopawamsic. Drawn to the area because of its rich resources, the first people of the area lived and hunted in the endless forest of hardwoods like oak, hickory, and chestnut.
As the Indigenous population was reduced by conflict and disease, settlers began to move into the area, and by the early 1800s, there was a sizable community of both Black and white settlers that grew over time thanks to the development of a nearby pyrite mine that operated until the outbreak of the Great Depression.
It was at this point that the federal government began buying up property and displacing the area’s families looking to turn the forest into a recreation area for poor urban youth. As federal agents tried to buy off or run off as many of the original settlers as they could, the Civilian Conservation Corp spent the better part of the 1930s building five separate camps that were managed by different community groups such as the YMCA and the Girl Scouts as well as family camps for impoverished Black families, spaced out around the forest to adhere to Virginia’s segregation laws.
This Recreational Demonstration Area was one of 24 managed by the National Parks Service and probably would have continued to host youth camps for many more years, but then in 1941, something unexpected happened: the Empire of Japan decided to bomb an isolated American naval base in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
After the US officially entered World War II, the country and all its resources and assets were realigned to support the war effort, including Prince William Forest. The summer camps were relocated, the last of the area’s residents who tried to hold on to their land were removed by force, and the properties and buildings that once made up the camp were turned over to a newly established intelligence agency—the Office of Strategic Services or OSS.
The OSS
At the time Pearl Harbor was bombed, US intelligence services were, to put it mildly, a mess. The Army and Navy both had their own intelligence operations going, as did the FBI, and nobody was doing a particularly good job of info sharing.
Since the outbreak of the war in Europe, the US had been mulling over the idea of a clandestine service modeled after Great Britain’s MI6 that combined both intelligence gathering and a commando unit focused on sabotage, disinformation, and guerrilla tactics. After the surprise attack on Hawaii, the mulling stopped, and FDR created the agency in June of 1942, immediately appointing William J Donovan to run it.
Donovan was a perfect choice as he was both a battle-tested warrior and a gentleman who easily traveled through the upper echelons of Washington society. His exploits during WWI were the stuff of legends and earned him the nickname “Wild Bill,” while his work for the Justice Department and in politics garnered him a great deal of respect. He also possessed a stalwart moral compass, as evidenced by how he used his connections to save Jews he had worked with as Fascism took hold in Europe. He even argued with FDR against Japanese internment, saying that it addressed a security problem that didn’t exist and would do more harm than good by providing propaganda for the enemy.
Donovan was also the natural choice to run a combined intelligence/special operations service as he had long been researching the idea and had spent the years in the run-up to US entry in the war working closely with his business connections in the UK to create the organizational blueprint that would eventually be used to create it. Today, his ideas and foresight are widely credited for laying the foundation for the Central Intelligence Agency and the entire US intelligence apparatus, which is probably why there is a statue of him at CIA headquarters in Langley.
But in 1942, the statues were a long way off, and Donovan moved fast to build his service and recruit members who would be turned into spies and commandos. He enlisted assistants who scoured the country for Americans who could handle the rigors of clandestine service and who had traveled or lived abroad, meaning his recruits were generally men under the age of 30 and a mix of foreign immigrants or those from affluent families and universities.
Eventually, the OSS would employ nearly 13,000 people, but first, they needed to be trained somewhere away from Washington DC, in a place that could obfuscate their activities and that wouldn’t require Donovan to waste time building facilities.
Spy Camp
Initially, the idea of turning national parkland into training camps for spies met pushback, but by March 1942, two members of the OSS arrived unannounced at the park to inspect the site and its facilities while a nervous and bewildered park superintendent, unsure what else to do, provided them with the rules of conduct for the park which somewhat laughably reminded visitors to stay on established trails and banned guns and explosives inside the park.
By April, the OSS had officially moved into Prince William Forest and nearby Catoctin Mountain in Maryland, and soon both parks were closed to the public and surrounded by a barbed wire fence and dog patrols protecting the perimeter.
Recruits began to arrive and were immediately placed under strict, almost draconian rules of conduct. All OSS recruits were required to use assumed names in order to protect their identity, were prohibited from gathering in groups of more than four, and were under constant surveillance, even as they slept. All the cabins in the camp were bugged and monitored by teams of psychologists who used what they heard and saw to build profiles for each operative to ensure they were mentally capable of tackling even the most grueling of missions.
The OSS camp was subdivided into different areas based on the training that was going on. Cabin camps 1 and 4, or Area C, were where the code breakers and communications operators were trained. In this area, they were trained to crack enemy codes, pass on intelligence even under the worst conditions, and were schooled in the art of “black propaganda,” spreading misinformation or self-defeating messaging that on the surface seemed to come from within enemy organizations. The men in this camp would go on to operate listening stations and outposts across the globe during the war and would play a hand in many of America’s most famous moments, such as Operation Torch and the D-Day landings at Normandy.
Across the park in Area A, the OSS trained men to be commandos and saboteurs. They were instructed in close combat tactics, lock picking, weapons, and how to extract information from enemies through interrogation. Additionally, they used the forest to fine-tune the stealth and camouflage skills, which they would later use to wreak havoc behind enemy lines. To fine-tune these skills, they would take outings to nearby towns where they would perfect their spycraft by practicing it on unsuspecting residents.
Return to the Park Service
While the OSS contributed to many Allied victories during the war, it lost the postwar battle in Washington DC. As 1944 wound down and it became clear that victory in both Europe and the Pacific were assured, the OSS was disbanded despite the efforts of Donovan to frame them as an asset to preserving ongoing peace.
By October of 1945, the OSS was effectively disbanded, and the process of turning Prince William Forest back over to the National Park Service began. The park rangers returned and, with the help of nearby army engineers, began the process of reopening the park by removing what the OSS left behind, like some buildings, a weapons range, and even live minefields. Organized camping resumed soon after the war ended, and before long the park looked much like it did prior to the war.
This history and the park’s role in the final Allied victory were largely unknown until 1992, when the National Archives released its records and photographs taken by the OSS. Today, the park celebrates this part of its history through periodic reenactments as well as a “spy camp” for kids held every summer.
