It was named after United States Army Air Forces Brigadier General Howard Knox Ramey.

Sugar cane farms covered some 3,796 acres (1,536 ha) that the government purchased for military use in the first week of September 1939 at a cost of $1,215,000.

The area was also populated by Poblado San Antonio, in which construction caused hundreds of families to be expropriated from the land.

[2][3] The closure of Ramey Air Force Base began in 1971 as part of a SAC-wide reduction in bombardment wings and lasted until 1973.

Success with a test array and then a full scale 40-element operational array at Eleuthera, Bahamas 1951-1952 led the Navy in 1952 to order six (quickly expanded to nine) undersea surveillance systems under the classified name of Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) to be installed under the unclassified name Project Caesar.

The shore terminals were described as supporting "oceanographic research" and given the generic and ambiguous name "Naval Facility" with the actual submarine detection purpose classified on a strict need-to-know basis.

[6][8] In 1971, as a result of the closing of Naval Air Station Isla Grande, the United States Coast Guard relocated its aviation activities to Ramey.