The object was found during preparation for Memorial Groves, a section of the park dedicated to honoring soldiers who trained at Camp Logan.
HOUSTON — A Houston Police Department bomb squad exploded part of a WWI-era artillery shell that was found in the woods at Memorial Park on Monday.
HPD first posted about it a little before 3 p.m. In their post, they said the bomb squad was there looking at an “unexploded WWI era ordnance.”.
We later heard from the Memorial Park Conservancy that the shell was found during site preparation for Memorial Groves, a section of the park dedicated to honoring the 70,000 soldiers who trained at Camp Logan during World War I.
Around 4 p.m., reporter Maria Aguilera, who covered this story for KHOU 11, said she heard a boom at the park. A few minutes later, HPD posted on X that the “planned detonation by the HPD Bomb Squad has been conducted and there is no threat to the public.”
Captain Kenneth Campbell with the Houston Police Department said they chose to blow the shell up because it wasn’t necessarily safe to move.
“As such, we went ahead and set a perimeter in the area, quarantined off the area,” he said. “We did a search, systematic search of the woods to make sure there were no people in there, although this isn’t necessarily an area that’s open to the public. We also had our helicopters fly over and check as well, and we did some other background research to make sure there were no people in the area. At that point in time, our bomb squad went over and went ahead and took the procedures necessary to make that ordnance safe, which detonated the ordnance.”
The park and nearby roads were later reopened.
“Memorial Park Conservancy would like to thank the Houston Police Department for their swift efforts in safely securing the device,” wrote Memorial Park Conservancy President and CEO Chris Ballard. “Memorial Groves, the 100-acre site along West Memorial Loop Drive, contains the largest number of Camp Logan archaeological finds within Memorial Park.”
From 1917 to 1919, Memorial Park was home to Camp Logan, where thousands of soldiers trained for World War I.
