Puuloa Rifle Range

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starbulletin.com/2002/08/18/news/story8.html

Chief Warrant Officer Johnny Johnson, who is serving his second term as director of the training range, said the Marines have used Puuloa since 1915 for weapons qualification.

Between 1921 and 1934, Puuloa was under the control of the Navy. The Marines erected a tent camp with only a commissary store and a mess hall that could feed 150. Gasoline-powered generators provided electricity.

By the early 1940s, the Marines assumed ownership and began to build several barracks, a mess hall, armory, ammunition supply point and a headquarters building. In 1960 the first sniper school in the Marine Corps was established at Puuloa.

In 1986, a $7 million military construction project produced a new transient quarters, a new dining facility, 20 bachelor enlisted rooms and administrative offices. Marines were housed there while guarding the Naval Weapons Station. But the end of the Cold War, the closing of the Marine barracks at Pearl Harbor and the removal of nuclear weapons from the Naval Weapons Station resulted in a reduced usage of the facility.

Six firing ranges, barracks and classrooms are located on 138 acres. Claucherty said more than 4,000 Marines from Kaneohe Bay use Puuloa annually to qualify on their M-16A2 rifles and 9 mm pistols. The range also is the site of the 14-day firing cycle for the Marines' sniper school.