This US Military Base on Foreign Soil Is Over a Century Old

24/7 Wall St. Insights

Each state has at least one military base, though many states have several dozen.
The U.S. has a total of 800 military bases worldwide.
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Military bases are scattered throughout the United States. According to the Pentagon and the Military Analysis Network, America is home to between 450 and 500 military bases. Each state has at least one base, though many states have several dozen. For instance, Texas has 59 bases and California has 123. Some of the most well-known military bases are Fort Liberty in North Carolina and Fort Campbell along the border of Kentucky and Tennessee. But American military bases are not only located in America. The U.S. has a total of 800 military bases worldwide, spanning multiple countries throughout the world.

The majority of American bases are found within the contiguous United States, followed by Europe and Southeast Asia. Camp Humphreys calls Southeast Asia home and is one of the largest US military bases abroad, but it is not the oldest, having opened in 1950. 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the study, U.S. Military Bases Abroad, 1776-2021, by David Vine, professor at the Department of Anthropology at American University, to determine America’s oldest overseas military bases. We ranked the bases according to the year they opened, listing the 23 bases founded by 1943 at the latest. Data on the number of active-duty personnel and bases within each country and estimated land acreage of each base came from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a military think-tank.

Why We Are Writing About US Military Bases Abroad

This list is comprised of 23 bases, 13 of which are located in Puerto Rico and operated by the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The U.S. usually establishes bases in locations where there is a need to secure a position or maintain assets via American personnel and supplies. Puerto Rico holds an important strategic position between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The first of these bases was constructed in 1902. In the wake of the United States’ victory over Spain in the Spanish-American War in 1898, Puerto Rico was one of the territories the U.S. received. Following that war, Cuba gained independence from Spain and agreed to lease Guantánamo Bay to the U.S. Navy on its southeastern shore in 1903. Other possessions the US secured from Spain in the Pacific – Guam and Wake Island – have military bases. Four of America’s oldest overseas bases are in the United Kingdom, established there just after America entered the war in 1941. That same year, the U.S. began leasing the Thule Air Base in Greenland from Denmark, which, at more than 233,000 acres, is by far the largest overseas military base by physical size.

Here are America’s oldest military bases abroad: