Fort Bragg

Fort Bragg

This very highly detailed coin with deep relief is struck in honor of U.S. Army Base Fort Bragg. Using a special minting technique called splash minting affords this coin's exceptional depth. Minted in a proprietary brass alloy, the coin is given an antique finish and is packaged in a polybag and header card.

Fort Bragg began in 1918 as Camp Bragg, when 127,000 acres of desolate sand hills and pine trees were designated as a U.S. Army installation.  Adequate water, rail facilities and the Carolina climate lent themselves to Army needs and Camp Bragg emerged as a field artillery site on August 21, 1918.  It was named in honor of Confederate General Braxton Bragg, a former artillery officer and North Carolinian.

Congress decided in February 1922 that all artillery sites east of the Mississippi River would become permanent Army posts. The camp was redesignated as Fort Bragg, September 30, 1922. 

The fort grew slowly, reaching a total of 5,400 soldiers by the summer of 1940.  With the threat of World War II and passage of the Selective Service act, a reception station was built here and Fort Bragg exploded to a population of 67,000 soldiers within a year.  In 1942, the first airborne units trained here in preparation for combat.  All five World War II airborne divisions the 82nd, 101st, 11th, 13th and 17th, trained in the Fort Bragg-Camp Mackall area.

The 82d Airborne Division was assigned here in 1946, upon its return form Europe. In 1951, XVIII Airborne Corps was reactivated here and Fort Bragg became widely known as the "Home of the Airborne and Special Operations Forces." The US Army Special Operations Command and the US Army Parachute Team (the Golden Knights) also call Fort Bragg home.

Fort Bragg's Mission is to maintain the XVIII Airborne Corps as a strategic crisis response force, manned and trained to deploy rapidly by air, sea and land anywhere in the world, prepared to fight upon arrival and win.