Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant



The Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant is an inactive 14974 acre government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) facility located off U.S. Highway 80 in Webster Parish between Minden and Bossier City, Louisiana. Part of LAAP is known as Camp Minden, a training center for the Louisiana Army National Guard.

Eminent domain was imposed beginning in 1939 to purchase the land for the plant, and the acquisition of the acreage was completed in 1941 even before the United States entered World War II. The plant was completed in eleven months under the direction of the contractor Silas Mason. At the time, the entire area was rural and thinly settled. Eight production lines were opened in May 1942. The number of employees during World War II peaked at 10,754 in December 1944, the month of the decisive Battle of the Bulge. Production of ammunition ceased in the summer of 1945 with V-J Day, and the plant was deactivated three months later. LAAP was restored to service during the Korean and Vietnam wars and operated through the 1980s until the middle 1990s.

Remington Rand reactivated LAAP in 1951, and employment reached five thousand in 1953. Production was suspended again in 1958. The plant was activated once more in September 1961 by Sperry Rand, the contractor until 1975. During this time there were two tragic accidental explosions in 1962 and again in 1968.

Thereafter, LAAP, colloquially known as "the shell plant", was operated from 1975 until 1989 by Morton Thiokol, now Thiokol. In the mid-1990s, the property came under the management of Lea Hall Properties of Shreveport. In addition to the National Guard installation, the former LAAP is now leased to various commercial entities.

While in operation, LAAP was like a town unto itself, with its own 20-bed hospital, fire department, telephone line, water wells, sewerage and lighting systems, roads, staff housing, and meal services. The facility was so large that many needed a map to find their way around the grounds. There were major safety and security programs with certain employes designated as "guards"; to prevent fires employees were forbidden to enter the plant with smoking materials in their possession.

In the building of the plant, nine rural cemeteries in Webster and Bossier parishes came uniquely under the perpetual care of the United States government. Existing wooden grave markers were replaced with small concrete slabs without the names of the deceased listed on the markers. The cemeteries are Allentown, Crowe, Jim Davis, Keene, Knotttingham, Raine, Richardson, Vanorsdel, and Walker. Those interred are listed with dates of birth and death and occasionally with other information in a printed survey, but individuals cannot visit LAAP grounds to look for specific graves; none would be found by the names were such a search conducted. The Crowe and Richardson cemeteries have the greatest number of individual grave listings.

Among the plant managers during the Vietnam activation was retired United States Army Col. Thomas L. Gaines (1901-1989), a native of Dickson County in western Tennessee who fought in both theaters of World War II. He left the active military in 1956 and was the LAAP general manager from 1961 until August 1969. During his time as plant manager, employment reached 7,800. Gaines also held the national position of chief of ammunition manufacture for all twenty-six Army munitions plants scattered throughout the United States. In his last year at LAAP, Gaines was also the Chamber of Commerce president in Minden; he died at the age of eighty-seven in 1989 and is interred at Alexandria National Cemetery in Pineville, Louisiana.

James E. McMichael (1932-2009), a former teacher/coach at the defunct Lowe Junior High School in Minden and an administrator in vocational technical education as well, served for a number of years as the LAAP employment manager. Applicants selected had to pass a manual dexterity test.

Environment
On March 31, 1989, LAAP was listed as a Superfund site on the National Priorities List. The United States Environmental Protection Agency found that the ground water was contaminated by explosive wastes including cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine (RDX) and trinitrotoluene (TNT).