Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant The Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant is an inactive government - owned , contractor - operated ( GOCO ) facility located off U . S . Highway 80 in Webster Parish between Minden and Bossier City , Louisiana . Part of LAAP is known as Camp Minden , a training center for the Louisiana Army National Guard . Eminent domain was imposed beginning in 1939 to purchase the land for the plant , and the acquisition of the acreage was completed in 1941 even before the United States entered World War II . The plant was completed in eleven months under the direction of the contractor Silas Mason . At the time , the entire area was rural and thinly settled . Eight production lines were opened in May 1942 . The number of employees during World War II peaked at 10 , 754 in December 1944 , the month of the decisive Battle of the Bulge . Production of ammunition ceased in the summer of 1945 with V - J Day , and the plant was deactivated three months later . LAAP was restored to service during the Korean and Vietnam wars and operated through the 1980s until the middle 1990s . Remington Rand reactivated LAAP in 1951 , and employment reached five thousand in 1953 . Production was suspended again in 1958 . The plant was activated once more in September 1961 by Sperry Rand , the contractor until 1975 . During this time there were two tragic accidental explosions in 1962 and again in 1968 . Thereafter , LAAP , colloquially known as " the shell plant " , was operated from 1975 until 1989 by Morton Thiokol , now Thiokol . In the mid - 1990s , the property came under the management of Lea Hall Properties of Shreveport . In addition to the National Guard installation , the former LAAP is now leased to various commercial entities . While in operation , LAAP was like a town unto itself , with its own 20 - bed hospital , fire department , telephone line , water wells , sewerage and lighting systems , roads , staff housing , and meal services . The facility was so large that many needed a map to find their way around the grounds . There were major safety and security programs with certain employes designated as " guards " ; to prevent fires employees were forbidden to enter the plant with smoking materials in their possession . In the building of the plant , nine rural cemeteries in Webster and Bossier parishes came uniquely under the perpetual care of the United States government . Existing wooden grave markers were replaced with small concrete slabs without the names of the deceased listed on the markers . The cemeteries are Allentown , Crowe , Jim Davis , Keene , Knotttingham , Raine , Richardson , Vanorsdel , and Walker . Those interred are listed with dates of birth and death and occasionally with other information in a printed survey , but individuals cannot visit LAAP grounds to look for specific graves ; none would be found by the names were such a search conducted . The Crowe and Richardson cemeteries have the greatest number of individual grave listings . Among the plant managers during the Vietnam activation was retired United States Army Col . Thomas L . Gaines ( 1901 - 1989 ) , a native of Dickson County in western Tennessee who fought in both theaters of World War II . He left the active military in 1956 and was the LAAP general manager from 1961 until August 1969 . During his time as plant manager , employment reached 7 , 800 . Gaines also held the national position of chief of ammunition manufacture for all twenty - six Army munitions plants scattered throughout the United States . In his last year at LAAP , Gaines was also the Chamber of Commerce president in Minden ; he died at the age of eighty - seven in 1989 and is interred at Alexandria National Cemetery in Pineville , Louisiana . James E . McMichael ( 1932 - 2009 ) , a former teacher / coach at the defunct Lowe Junior High School in Minden and an administrator in vocational technical education as well , served for a number of years as the LAAP employment manager . Applicants selected had to pass a manual dexterity test . Environment . On March 31 , 1989 , LAAP was listed as a Superfund site on the National Priorities List . The United States Environmental Protection Agency found that the ground water was contaminated by explosive wastes including cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine ( RDX ) and trinitrotoluene ( TNT ) .