World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseDugway Proving Ground was established in the Great Salt Lake Desert in Tooele County, Utah, United States in the summer of 1942 as a testing facility for the Chemical Warfare Service of the United States Army. It encompassed 3,243 square kilometers (801,505 acres or 1,252 square miles) of desert land. Beginning in May 1943, incendiary bombing tests against typical civilian structures found in Germany and Japan began. Czech-American architect Antonin Raymond, who spent a significant amount of time working in Japan prior to WW2, designed a series of buildings typical of Japanese middle-class urban dwellings for the purpose of bombing tests; although he later noted that he was not proud of this work, he also believed that his work helped hasten the end of the war. In Oct 1943, biological warfare facilities were established at a remote section of Dugway; it was known as the Granite Peak Installation. Dugway was inactivated in Aug 1946 after the end of WW2. It was reactivated during the Korean War for testing of biological, chemical, and radioactive weapons. Open air tests of highly dangerous materials were conducted at this remote location in the following decades; one of the more infamous episodes resulted in such testing was the Mar 1968 Dugway Sheep Kill incident, during which nerve agent VX killed 6,249 sheep belonging to ranchers outside the testing grounds. Dugway Proving Ground continues to serve as a highly secretive US Army facility at the time of this writing.

Dugway Proving Ground Interactive Map

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