Plantation The Fort Belvoir site was originally the home of
William Fairfax, the cousin and land agent of
Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, the
proprietor of the
Northern Neck, which stood on land now part of the base. William Fairfax purchased the property in 1738, when his cousin arranged for him to be appointed customs agent (tax collector) for the Potomac River, and William erected an elegant brick mansion overlooking the river, moving in with his family in 1740. Lord Fairfax came to America in 1747 and stayed less than a year at the Belvoir estate before moving to
Greenway Court. The Fairfax family lived at Belvoir for over 30 years, but eldest son (and heir) George William Fairfax sailed to England on business in 1773, never to return. The manor home was destroyed by fire in 1783. The ruins of the
Belvoir Mansion and the nearby Fairfax family grave site are listed on the
National Register of Historic Places.
Fort The post was founded during
World War I as Camp A. A. Humphreys, named for
Union Army general
Andrew A. Humphreys, who was also
Chief of Engineers. The post was renamed Fort Belvoir in the 1935 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the request of
Howard W. Smith, a Congressman from Virginia, in recognition of the
Belvoir plantation that once occupied the site. Camp Humphreys was established in World War I as the U.S. Army Engineers Training School. In December 1917, the Secretary of War approved construction of a cantonment at Fort Belvoir for 30,000 engineer replacement troops. It served as the postgraduate institution for U.S. Military Academy engineers and a finishing school for engineering troops headed to war. The
Combat Developments Command, established in 1962 under Lieutenant General
John P. Daley (1962-63), was located at Fort Belvoir. Lieutenant General
John Norton (general) was its last commander. Occupying the position until June 1973, Norton assisted in the continued reorganization of the Army, unsuccessfully attempting to preserve CDC, which was later merged into the new
Training and Doctrine Command. The engineer school, which came to host the Engineer Officer Basic Course, relocated in 1988 from Fort Belvoir to
Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. As a result of the
2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission, a substantial number of personnel were transferred to Fort Belvoir, and others were civilians employed there. All major Washington, DC-area
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) facilities, including those in
Bethesda, Maryland,
Reston, Virginia, and
Washington, DC, were consolidated at a new facility, the NGA Campus East, situated on the former Engineer Proving Ground site. The cost of the new center was $2.4 billion. In March 2017, the
Army Historical Foundation announced its intent to begin the construction of the
National Museum of the United States Army at Fort Belvoir. The museum, set on , tells the story of the army since 1775. The museum features historical galleries, an interactive Experiential Learning Center, and the Army Theater. The outdoor venues include a Memorial Garden, Amphitheater, Parade Ground, and Army Trail. It opened to the public on 11 November 2020. In 2020, in the wake of the
George Floyd protests and petitions to rename
U.S. Army bases with names related to the Confederacy, the fort was proposed to be renamed, as well. While not named after a Confederate officer, it was renamed after a
slave plantation that was once owned by prominent 18th-century
Loyalist landowner
George William Fairfax. Representative Howard W. Smith, who requested the 1930 renaming, was an old-school
Southern Democrat who was sympathetic to the then-popular
Dunning School of history that revered the
Confederacy, and resented a base in Virginia being named after
Andrew A. Humphreys, a
Union Army general. The name of the base has been criticized as improperly nostalgic for slavery and the
antebellum era. In June 2021, the fort was initially included in a list of military bases to be considered for renaming by a newly created
Naming Commission. Later in March 2022, the commission determined that Fort Belvoir did not meet the criteria provided in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act for making a renaming recommendation, but the commission recommended that the Department of Defense conduct its own review of the naming of the fort based on results of the commission's historical research. == Units and agencies ==