Under the prodding of the national cantonment headquarters at Washington, the organization of the construction quartermaster in Deming and the efficiency of the government contractor on the job. Camp Cody is nearing completion at the rate of four percent per day.
According to a daily progress report made in the office of Major Charles H. Miller, construction quartermaster and submitted to Washington, the great cantonment is now 37 percent completed.
This general assault upon nature for the sheltering of 36,000 soldiers assumes great magnitude in view of the fact that all of the raw material like the army or workmen had to come over the rails from great distances. The recruiting of this huge total of men and supplies was one of the first tremendous problems of general contractor J. W. Thompson of St. Louis. To date he has brought 284,000 cars of material of all sorts and 4,000 workmen to fashion it.
Desert Spot Being Transformed
The site for the Deming cantonment did not present the problem of land clearing which many of the other national cantonments did, but desert conditions offered impediments as great. Thousands of loads of gravel were added to the main roads of the camp to keep the heavy army trucks from sinking deep into sand. New railroad spurs were built and are being added each day for the purpose of delivering supplies material to the various parts of the reservation which is almost three miles in length by one mile in width. Two big wells were sunk, a pumping plant installed, and many miles of water mains laid to furnish the camp with the first requisite, and then electric wiring had to be strung by the rod to make the place habitable at night. And only after those things were attended to could the carpenters come in and begin their devil’s tattoo with hammer and saw. – El Paso Herald Newspaper – Friday, August 24, 1917
