Named after Major General John Adams Dix, the almost-century old army installation was established in 1917 originally as a cantonment camp, a receiving and training center for World War I.


Major General Dix was an Army veteran of both the War of 1812 and the Civil War, and a US Senator and US Secretary between wars; after the Civil War, he was Governor of New York. Before returning to Army service, Treasury Secretary Dix issued an order at the outbreak of the war that anyone attempting to haul down the American flag at a Treasury post or cutter was to be shot. Dix was senior major general among volunteer militias, and acted to arrest the Maryland legislature, preventing that state from seceding. The General was later an important rear-echelon flag officer, being too old for a field command.


During World War I, the 78th, 87th, and 34th divisions were trained and staged for deployment. After the war, the camp was a separation facility for soldiers returning to civilian life, and later a training center for active Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard units. The camp was also used as a base for the Civilian Conservation Corps from the middle '30s to 1941.


It wasn't until 1939 that the camp became a permanent Army post and was named Fort Dix, and with US involvement in World War II, again a major northeast receiving and training center. From the the 1940s to 1960s, Fort Dix was home to the 9th Infantry Division, the 69th Infantry Division, and the United States Army Training Center, Infantry. In 1959 Fort Dix became the Home of the "Ultimate Weapon," a statue of the American Soldier, the indispensable weapon of the United States.


From the 1970s to late 1990s, Fort Dix was the location of U.S Army Training and Doctrine Command, Air Force Security Police training, and the deployment of troops for Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm.


Fort Dix ended its active Army training mission as a result of the BRAC recommendation of 1988. After this, Dix became a primary center for the training, deployment, mobilization, and demobilization of reserve component forces. In 2009, as a result of the BRAC of 2005, Fort Dix became the Army unit of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.