US Navy Recruit Training Command - Keel Yearbook (Great Lakes, IL)

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R. ADIVHHAL FRANCIS P. OLD, USN Commandant Ninth Naval District wmv -wm w' 1 rfffai t an D R 'N I ii CAPTAIN JOHN D. KELSEY, USN Commander, USNTC Great Lakes, Illinois

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,, t , A , , L i v ' , i N , t I 'f t , nl' 1 1 dl 1 L 4 ! n-.1 J' n-4 1 r. :. From a modest beginning shortly after the turn of the century, U. S. Naval Training Center, Great Lakes, Ill., has grown to a capacity of more than 80,000 and become the Navy's largest training es- tablishment. It was in 1904 when a board appointed by Presi. dent Theodore Roosevelt selected two adjoining farms near Lake Bluff, Illinois, as a site for a naval training station. The site was presented as a gift of the people of nearby Chicago, acting thru their lVlerchant's Club. ' L After six years of construction, the Navy had a 172-acre station with a capacity of 1,500 men. It was commissioned Iuly l, 1911 and dedicated asia Station by President William Howard Taft in No- vember of that year. Under conditions of wartime urgency, Great Lakes has undergone two periods of rapid expan- sion. When the Armistice of 1918 concluded the Kaiser war, Great Lakes had been expanded to 1,200 acres and 45,000 men were in training. The Station had trained a quarter-million men for serv- ice in that war. Between wars, the station's activity came to a M EUO'iiE2EE5t'il'5 ZL:iFlsQfliFnr3Qo2s it-g H1 ri Tffwz--kg,-. I 9i!3,i'i5g JTJSTVELQ Qwifsstf