Pueblo Depot Activity ''(PUDA)'', formerly known as the Pueblo Ordnance Depot and the Pueblo Army Depot, was a

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

ammunition storage and supply facility. Responsibility for the depot fell upon the

United States Army Ordnance Corps The United States Army Ordnance Corps, formerly the United States Army Ordnance Department, is a sustainment branch of the United States Army, headquartered at Fort Lee, Virginia. The broad mission of the Ordnance Corps is to supply Army comb ...

, and the first civilians were hired in 1942 as operations began. The mission quickly expanded to include general supplies as well. It is a site located east of

Pueblo In the Southwestern United States, Pueblo (capitalized) refers to the Native tribes of Puebloans having fixed-location communities with permanent buildings which also are called pueblos (lowercased). The Spanish explorers of northern New Spain ...

, Colorado at . In 1945 they began to receive mass amounts of equipment returning from the combat theaters of World War II. Therefore, the mission expanded yet again to include the maintenance and refurbishing of

artillery Artillery is a class of heavy military ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during siege ...

fire control Fire control is the practice of reducing the heat output of a fire, reducing the area over which the fire exists, or suppressing or extinguishing the fire by depriving it of fuel, oxygen, or heat (see fire triangle). Fire prevention and control i ...

, and

optical Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultravio ...

material. In 1951 the depot assumed responsibility to distribute

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...

ammunition for an eight-state area, as well as storage of strategic and critical materials for the

General Services Administration The General Services Administration (GSA) is an independent agency of the United States government established in 1949 to help manage and support the basic functioning of federal agencies. GSA supplies products and communications for U.S. gover ...

(GSA). They were also tasked to rebuild and provide on-site maintenance support for guided missiles, ensure calibration and maintenance of electronic test equipment and radio-controlled aerial targets. They would also provide specialized training for new Army equipment as needed. In 1952,

Rocky Mountain Arsenal The Rocky Mountain Arsenal was a United States chemical weapons manufacturing center located in the Denver Metropolitan Area in Commerce City, Colorado. The site was completed December 1942, operated by the United States Army throughout the late ...

in Denver, Colorado transferred chemical agents and chemical munitions to Pueblo Army Depot for secure storage. In 1974 Pueblo Army Depot was redesignated as Pueblo Depot Activity. Upon this redesignation the missile maintenance mission was transferred to

Letterkenny Army Depot Letterkenny Army Depot (originally Letterkenny Ordnance Depot), the Center of Industrial and Technical Excellence (CITE) for Air Defense and Tactical Missile Systems, was established in 1942. The Depot is under the command structure of the U.S. ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, and responsibility for the Activity was shifted from Army Ordnance, to

Tooele Army Depot Tooele Army Depot (TEAD) is a United States Army Joint Munitions Command post in Tooele County, Utah. It serves as a storage site for war reserve and training ammunition. The depot stores, issues, receives, renovates, modifies, maintains and demi ...

in Utah. The Defense Secretary's Commission on Base Realignment and Closure recommended realignment for Pueblo Depot Activity in its 1988 report. This realignment transferred most of the previous responsibilities to other installations. The only remaining mission for the Depot was the secure storage of the

chemical agents A chemical weapon (CW) is a specialized munition that uses chemicals formulated to inflict death or harm on humans. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), this can be any chemical compound intended as ...

already there. Responsibility for the Depot shifted from Tooele, to the US Army Material Command headquartered at

Fort Belvoir Fort Belvoir is a United States Army installation and a census-designated place (CDP) in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. It was developed on the site of the former Belvoir plantation, seat of the prominent Fairfax family for whom Fai ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

. The empty bunkers and warehouses which used to store the non-chemical munitions and other supplies as well as repair and

manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to ...

facilities were turned over to the Pueblo Depot Activity Development Authority who currently offer these properties for

civilian Civilians under international humanitarian law are "persons who are not members of the armed forces" and they are not " combatants if they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war". It is slightly different from a non-combatant ...

lease purposes.

Lethal Unitary Chemical Agents and Munitions

In 1952 Pueblo Depot Activity received its first shipment of chemical agents. These agents were trucked from

Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

, Colorado. Upon receipt of these munitions for secure storage, PUDA became one of eight installations within the United States where chemical weapons are stored. The depot created an exclusion zone within its bounds specifically for this purpose. It was rather like a depot within a depot. It was designated as the Chemical Depot, of Pueblo Depot Activity. These actions would prove to save the installation from closure when it was considered in 1988. Because of the chemical stockpiles it was realigned rather than closed. It is scheduled for closure in 2022 when it completes what will be its last mission, the safe elimination of all remaining chemical stockpiles. This process began in 2015 and is being done through on-site neutralization.

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External links

*{{HAER , survey=CO-22 , id=co0169 , title=Pueblo Depot Activity, 15 miles east of Pueblo, Pueblo County, CO , data=57 Closed installations of the United States Army Historic American Engineering Record in Colorado

Lethal Unitary Chemical Agents and Munitions

See also

References

External links