Mountain Home Air Force Base, Base Chapel, 350 Willow Street, Cantonment Area, Mountain Home, Elmore County, ID

Significance: Building 611 is significant as an example of the World War II 800 series mobilization-type regimental chapel that used the optional laminated arch roof system rather than the wood-framed truss system. / The construction of the Base Chapel, Building 611, was part of a nationwide mobilization program of World War II when Army bases were established rapidly to house the millions of Americans called to serve during the war. These Army bases consisted of temporary wood frame buildings constructed according to a standardized "800 series" design created by the Construction Division of the Army Quartermaster Corps and the Corps of Engineers. This design was used throughout the country in the successful effort to build bases efficiently and rapidly in which to house and train soldiers for combat. Building 611, one of these standard 800 series buildings, was the single regimental chapel built at the Mountain Home Army Air Field as part of a $13 million dollar construction effort between 1942 and 1943 to construct a bomber training base. The resultant installation, 5,760 acres, included 343 buildings, encompassing barracks, a hospital, mess halls, headquarters, administration and classroom buildings, theater, warehouses, hangars, steam plant, sewage treatment plant, munitions igloos and magazines, and a complex system of three runways, roads, a railroad spur and sidings, and a gunnery range. Several thousand workers, under contract to J.A. Terteling and Sons, Morrison-Knudsen and Triangle Construction, Vernon Brothers, J.O. Jordan, and Mountain Home Builders, enabled the base to be built in record time. Mountain Home Army Air Base, designated in 1943 as Mountain Home Army Air Field, was used by the 386the Bombardment Group (Heavy), followed by a number of other heavy bombardment groups using B-24 Liberator bombers. The installation planned to serve as a Boeing B-29 Superfortress training base in 1945, but was instead deactivated at the end of World War II in August of 1945.
Survey number: HABS ID-118-A