Camp Jesse Turner on Pickett Hill east of Van Buren in Crawford County was a small, specialized World War II railroad training camp where soldiers learned to operate railroads captured in enemy territory worldwide. Briefly called Camp Walter Johnson, it was renamed by September 24, 1943, to honor Jesse Turner, an Arkansas Supreme Court justice from the area. Soldiers of four Railroad Operating Battalions—the 759th, 748th, 733rd, and 734th—trained in the Missouri Pacific Railroad yards and roundhouse in Van Buren, using locomotives, cars, tracks, bridges, telephone and telegraph lines, and repair shops as their weapons of war. On July 15, 1942, the Department of War contracted with the widow of Dr. Lucas Giles to buy thirty-five acres from his estate for the camp, and the urgency of wartime preparation showed in the rapid survey of the site and unloading of building materials by July 18. Thirty-four of fifty-one temporary non-insulated buildings were hurriedly constructed, and on December 4, 1942, Lieutenant Colonel E. F. Barnes officially accepted the camp for the Department of Transportation from the Corps of Engineers. The soldiers formed close ties with local citizens, who provided recreation facilities and invited them to church, school, and civic functions, while the troops supported Red Cross bond drives, held parades, and sent battalion bands into surrounding communities to raise funds for the war effort. The camp and its soldiers also played a pivotal role during the Arkansas River flood of 1943, when floodwaters engulfed Van Buren, washed out the bridge to Fort Smith, damaged levees, and inundated low-lying farmland. Although the flooding severely damaged local railroad lines, the soldiers quickly ran trains around the flooded routes, housed and fed flood-stricken residents, and helped build a pontoon bridge to reconnect Van Buren and Fort Smith. The first and only baby born at the camp was reported on May 21, 1943, and departing troops of the 759th named the child Jesse Turner Rutledge. By mid-June 1943, four hundred African-American soldiers of the 469th Quartermaster Truck Regiment from Camp Maxey, Texas, were bivouacked there to help reclaim flooded farmland in time for fall planting. The 759th left on May 20, 1943, for overseas service and later joined campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and southern France; the 748th arrived before July 1943 for special training and left in late October for the China-Burma-India theater; the 733rd arrived in late November 1943 and departed in June 1944 for France soon after D-Day; and the 734th arrived before June 16, 1944, then left late that year for northern France. After the final battalion departed, the camp was phased down.