The camp was largely scrapped as government surplus following termination of World War II, with a portion of the site reconstituted as "Adair Air Force Station" in 1957.

Planning for a United States Army cantonment in Oregon preceded the surprise bombing of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941.

Six months earlier in June, with World War II already raging in Europe and the ranks of the American military swelling, several potential sites for Army camps in the Willamette Valley of western Oregon had been surveyed.

[4] The explosion of population at the locale was so great during the wartime years that had the site of Camp Adair been incorporated, it would have constituted the second largest city in the state of Oregon.

[14][15][16] In 1972, after their requests for the site met deaf ears, the CISCO leaders led a group of 200 people from Portland through the Chemawa Indian School to Camp Adair, where they occupied one of the buildings.

[4] A nonprofit organization called Adair Living History was established at that time and began raising the estimated $850,000 needed to complete renovations of the barracks and other improvements to the new historic site.