Behind the scenes look at Fort McCoy

On April 19, Col. Michael Poss, other members from Fort McCoy and two dozen members from the communities of Tomah and Sparta toured Fort McCoy. The visitors heard about renovations at the Army installation and got a first-hand experience of training U.S. soldiers go through at the facility.

Fort McCoy is its own city, said Director of Public Works Jessica Reeves.

“We have our own electrical grid, our own police department, fire department, and wastewater treatment plant,” she said.

The wastewater treatment plant is going under a $60 million renovation to bring it up to par. The WWII-era barracks can house about 50 people. The buildings were used to house Afghan refugees last Fall. The refugees did a lot of damage to those buildings with the cultural differences they faced, including going to the bathroom, trash and food. Fort McCoy is working on a multi-million dollar contract to get the barracks brought back to the level they were at before the refugees came.

There are also two new barracks going up which are four stories high and can house up to 400 people. The new four-story buildings cost about $25 million each to build.

Fort McCoy is one of the largest training areas in the nation totaling about 46,000 acres.

The tour group was shocked to see full-size villages set up to simulate Iraq. These are what Poss likes to call “ranges.” They are strictly for training purposes.

“These villages are set up to simulate Iraq, but they can be replicated to simulate any nation, no matter the territory or terrain,” he said. “We have cameras, so whoever is training can go back and look at what they did wrong and learn.”

Fort McCoy can handle two brigades (one brigade averages about 3,000-5,000 troops) at one time for training. The Fort normally sees about 120,000 troops a year, with most being in the summer when Wisconsin and Illinois National Guard members train there.

Fort McCoy mostly has law enforcement and military training in the ranges, Poss said. There are underground tunnels in these ranges, a subway station, police station, it’s like a whole village, but nobody lives there. It’s just for training. “We have very high standards in the U.S. military. Countries like Russia do not care about civilians, we do and we practice in the subway station with civilians and enemies,” Poss said.

Fort McCoy visitors visited the simulation area, which can simulate a number of scenarios. They were set up with a Humvee and screens all around it. They had a shooter on top, driver and a few passengers each.

The simulation area started out in 2010 as one building, in 2014 they added five buildings, and they added six more buildings in the last couple years.

Fort McCoy is very proud of its commemorative area. There are vehicles here that can’t be found anywhere else.

Armed Forces Day Open House will be on Saturday, May 21. This years event is the 20^th anniversary of the commemorative area. Buildings and the commemorative area are open to the public during the event.

Other miscellaneous facts:

Fort McCoy has medical mannikins for trainees. The mannikins can give birth, bleed and scream.

Fort McCoy has institutional training in a school house setting on base, which the fort is only one of three bases in the country to have.

There are 120 homes on South Post Housing, which is family housing for members of the military between Sparta and Fort McCoy.

Fort McCoy has its own team of environmentalist, who say, “we could farm a 20,000-acre farm with the machinery we have.”

There is a state police academy and a Wisconsin military academy on Fort McCoy. The military academy focuses on artillery.

Fort McCoy had a $2 billion economic impact in 2021.