The Camp Croft Infantry Replacement Training Center (IRTC) was officially activated on January 10, 1941, as a part of the Fourth Service Command, with housing for some 20,000 trainees and support personnel. It served the War Department for the next four years-plus as one of the Army's principal IRTCs and as a prisoner of war (POW) camp. The young men who came to Spartanburg and Camp Croft were, for the most part. from New York, Pennsylvania, and New England. They arrived in groups of 16,000, were introduced to Army discipline, food and drill sergeants, and began the standard 13-week cycle of basic training. They fired M-1 rifles, Browning Automatic Rifles, anti-tank rockets, and infantry mortars on numerous training ranges located to the south of the cantonment area. They ran obstacle and fit-to-fight courses, trained to fight in a chemical environment using the camp's gas chambers and gas obstacle course and even conducted amphibious warfare training using real explosives/explosions to best simulate war. Once they left Camp Croft, they joined units to fight battles all around the world, e.g. North Africa and Italy; Normandy and the Rhine; and New Guinea and the Philippines. (US Army Corps of Engineers, Rock Island District. Sept 1993. Archives Search Report Findings for the former Camp Croft Army Training Facility).

The timeline outlines USAESCH activities occurring at Camp Croft since 1993. Project information is also maintained in the Information Repository at the Spartanburg County Public Library, 151 S. Church Street, Spartanburg, South Carolina.