Cecil County has supported the mission since the earliest days when Cecil men took up arms and marched with the Continental Line earning for Maryland the monicker the Old Line State. Our greatest call to duty was heard during World War II when tens of thousands of war workers flocked to the once rural and agrarian county in Maryland's northeastern corner to work at munitions plants in Elkton with contracts for both the Army and Navy.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the former Tome School for Boys campus at Port Deposit, was purchased by the Federal Government and a special communique from President Franklin D. Roosevelt (who had been a guest speaker at the school in 1923) to be converted for military purposes. 72 farms surrounding the school were added to develop a 1,200 acre site that would become the Bainbridge Naval Training Center (1941-1976) which trained over 350,000 men and women for military service. Between March and August 1942, local residents and incoming war workers, converted local homes to boarding houses for construction personnel and built 506 buildings in six months to welcome the first recruit to Bainbridge in October 1942 - a 19-year old from Pittsburg, Pa., named Damon Sutton.
During the First World War the former Perry Point Plantation had been purchased by the federal government to be leased to Atlas Powder Company to make ammonium nitrate but Armistice Day came before the opening day and the federal government was left with a host of factory buildings and worker housing and no need for either. So the facilities were converted into hospitals and treatment centers, even a post office, and since that time until present day it is known as the Perry Point VA Healthcare Center.
Bainbridge closed in 1976 and is now part of a redevelopment project of 1,200 acres that will bring over 1,200 new homes to the former naval base where men of women of our greatest generation once marched. THe small community of Port Deposit has two museums which both commemorate the Navy heritage of this mammoth base and the stories of our veterans. Because we have been part of a base closing that has deeply impacted our community when the base realignment and closing decision of 2005 was made, Cecil County answered the call, yet again, of other impacted communities.
Cecil County has conducted over 100 private and motor coach tours for defense contractors, individuals, personnel (civilian and military) since 2008. We continue to offer tours and have developed this website as another vehicle to allow local residents to offer a helping hand and a tour of our county to help support those who support our war fighters. We organized and held the first Know Before You Go Expo in March 2009, inviting participants from other Maryland counties, and Pennsylvania and Delaware to participate, to share information in northern New Jersey, and organized a second expo for October 2009. Cecil County has a history of supporting the mission of our military and our warfighters, a legacy and tradition that continues today.
