The Great Hall at Sunriver Resort 

SUNRIVER — The Great Hall at Sunriver Resort may be a desirable wedding venue, but its origin wasn’t as glamorous. It was even used to house cattle for a period.

The building was briefly an officer’s club at Camp Abbot during World War II. The camp was a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers training center between March 1943 and June 1944.

The Great Hall, constructed with more than 500 pine logs, is all that remains of the former camp, which took about nine months to build in 1942. Combat engineers likely built the expansive officer’s club in 1944 to practice construction skills.

“They built it as a training project; at least that was the reason given,” said Les Joslin, a former executive director of the Sunriver Nature Center and a U.S. Forest Service historian.

About 90,000 combat engineers were trained at the camp while it was open. The first six weeks involved basic combat training, then bridge construction and demolition and field maneuvers, Joslin said.

The training involved building bridges across the Deschutes River and then blowing them up as invasion plans ramped up during the war.

“The job was to train soldiers as combat engineers — to build roads and bridges to support the army’s advance across Europe and Japan,” Joslin said.

Some veterans who trained at Camp Abbot have expressed less-than-fond memories during reunions and anniversaries commemorating their time there.

At a reunion banquet in May 1977, one veteran told The Bulletin he remembered cutting the logs for the officer’s club and dragging them “down from the mountain in a foot of snow.” He added, “It was cold as hell.”

Dwight Newton, a technician fifth grade stationed at the camp, said in 1978 the officer’s club was the “biggest boondoggle you ever saw,” according to The Bulletin archives.

“What a waste of material and manpower,” Newton said, more than 30 years after the camp closed.

There was one dance held at the officer’s club before the camp closed. Service members were relocated to Fort Lewis, Washington, as Allied forces made a push to retake Europe following the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944.

Joslin said most of the camp buildings were sold as surplus and hauled away. The Hudspeth Land & Livestock Company of Prineville purchased the camp property in 1945 from the federal government.

The officer’s club was still far from being known as the Great Hall and a place for wedding ceremonies and receptions. The building was neglected and used as a cattle barn.

In 1965, developers purchased the nearly 5,500 acres that included the former camp site with visions of a recreational community that would later become Sunriver. The first homesite was sold in 1968.

The Great Hall in recent years has been the destination for hundreds of weddings. The large room can accommodate about 300 guests. It is also used for music events, company dinners, ceremonies and festivals.

— Reporter: 541-617-7820, tshorack@bendbulletin.com