Wednesday, April 6, 2005
Camp Breckinridge tracts are involved
By James Malone
jmalone@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal
Fearing coastal attacks during the early fever pitch of World War II, the Army took 36,000 acres of rolling farmland in Western Kentucky's Union and Webster counties to build Camp Breckinridge in 1942 to train soldiers.
Hundreds of families had to leave, mistakenly believing they might be allowed to buy back their property someday.
Now a federal judge has ruled that about 1,000 landowners and descendants are due $32 million in profits that the government made in 1965 by selling the land's mineral rights to oil, coal and power companies.
>snip
The people who sold their property or had it condemned did not learn the government had reaped financial benefits off the mineral rights until 1964 -- when an article about the sales appeared in the Union County Advocate.
more:
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050406/NEWS0104/504060456/1008/NEWS01