Fort Meade

[snopes]

Comment: Do you know if this is true? It's on the Maryland Fun Facts
website, but it does not make sense when compared to the history of Ft.
Meade, on their website.

"Fort Meade near Laurel became a base because a train engineer delivering
soldiers to Meade knew only one Meade, the one in Maryland. He was not
aware of Fort Meade, Florida. The confusion happened so often a second
base was built in Maryland in an attempt to avoid the confusion."

[General Redwood]

I served at Fort Meade and never heard this rumor. As far as I know it was simply named for a Civil War general. And it's not like Florida and Maryland are close to each other so I doubt you could be that easily confused.

[CannonFodder]

Originally Posted by General Redwood

I served at Fort Meade and never heard this rumor. As far as I know it was simply named for a Civil War general. And it's not like Florida and Maryland are close to each other so I doubt you could be that easily confused.

It's also unlikely that during or immediately after the Civil War that a fort named after a Union general would have been placed in Florida.

[Majorsam]

Fort Meade, Florida, was established in 1849, pre-dating the Civil War, but was named for the officer who would later become General Meade.

It is likely that at some point during reconstruction that soldiers would have been stationed there, but as far as I can tell there was never a town of Meade, Maryland near Laurel, although there is a Meade Heights & Meade Village...although those seem to be developments attached to Fort Meade. The Fort Meade in Maryland was established in 1917 and named in honor of General Meade.

The Fort Meade in Florida was dismantled in the 1890s, and one presumes that the fort was probably deserted well before that since most Union soldiers would have pulled out the previous decade as reconstruction ended.

Since there was a twenty-plus year gap from when the Florida Meade was dismantled and the Maryland Meade was established, this sounds like an implausible story.

[snopes]

The confusion happened so often a second base was built in Maryland in an attempt to avoid the confusion.

Of course, it never occurred to anyone that simply specifying "Fort Meade, Florida" would be an easier and better solution than creating an identically-named base in a completely different part of the country.

- snopes

[dfresh]

Originally Posted by snopes

Of course, it never occurred to anyone that simply specifying "Fort Meade, Florida" would be an easier and better solution than creating an identically-named base in a completely different part of the country.

- snopes

Come on snopes, this is the military! They would much rather spend a lot of money than do the simple fix.

[Mycroft]

It is almost the other way round in the UK; fortifications/military bases etc usually being named after the location, although there are some exceptions ie most naval shore establishments have names originally taken from ships which housed the establishment before they came ashore, and some of these were named after admirals.

[Majorsam]

Originally Posted by snopes

Of course, it never occurred to anyone that simply specifying "Fort Meade, Florida" would be an easier and better solution than creating an identically-named base in a completely different part of the country.

- snopes

There you go again, applying logic to a military situation.

I'd also point out that the train engineer doesn't have a lot of say in where his train is going...dispatchers would have a fit if he took the wrong turn when his train was supposed to go Florida and it wandered over to Maryland.

[RichardM]

Now I understand why Birmingham Alabama was so named. A ship captain took a wrong turn leaving Mobile harbor and went upstream instead of crossing the Atlantic.

[snopes]

Originally Posted by Majorsam

There you go again, applying logic to a military situation.

Even for the military, the original claim (at least as it's worded in the OP) seems rather absurd. If materiel meant for Florida kept ending up in Maryland, how would creating an identically-named facility in the latter help the situation at all? The problem would still exist, only now it would be even more likely to occur. Having two bases with the same name would not "avoid the confusion"; it would add to it.

- snopes