Redstone Arsenal marks 75 years in northern Alabama

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Redstone Arsenal turns 75 this year.

That's cause for major celebration in Huntsville, and all of Alabama for that matter. Redstone is one of the state's major economic engines, and could be described as the Pentagon South.

It's home to the headquarters of the Army Materiel Command, Aviation and Missile Command, Space & Missile Defense Command, Missile Defense Agency, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and training and development centers for the FBI and ATF, and on and on.

Since opening in 1941 as the Army's chemical weapons development site, it transformed Huntsville from the watercress capital of the world to the Rocket City we know today.

But did you know that, if not for a general literally getting on his hands and knees at the Pentagon, none of that may have happened?

In 1949, the Army had shut down chemical weapons operations here and was planning to auction off the property where Redstone sits.

Maj. Gen. Holger Toftoy, the architect of Operation Paperclip that brought Wernher von Braun and his German rocket team to Fort Bliss in Texas after World War II, wanted to put all rocket and missile work in one location.

With maps and charts of Huntsville and Redstone arsenals spread on the floor of Gen. Matthew Ridgeway's office, Toftoy made his case for Huntsville.

"General, you can see I'm on my knees about this project," Toftoy told Ridgeway, according to a Huntsville Times article from 2011.

There were many empty buildings — about 900 of them. What's more, they were on 35,000 acres far from the city limits, perfect for the research and development of rockets and missiles.

Toftoy's pitch was successful, and the rest, as they say, is history. Von braun and his team were transferred here, and Huntsville was transformed.

Today, more than 30,000 people work on Redstone Arsenal daily, and tens of thousands more support its work outside the gates in Cummings Research Park, at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and Alabama A&M University and all across the Tennessee Valley.

Redstone's economic impact on Alabama is measured in the hundreds of billions, and its impact on America's military might and space exploration are immeasurable.

On June 30th, Huntsville's military and civilian leaders will don black tie and gather for a gala celebration of Redstone Arsenal's 75th anniversary during the city's Armed Forces Week celebration.

All of us who have benefited from Huntsville's meteoric rise as a defense and space industry mecca should have our own celebration, and perhaps get down on our hands and knees and thank Gen. Holger Toftoy for going to the mat for us.

Had it not been for his vision, Huntsville might still be known for watercress and cotton, not rocket science.