Drum Barracks The Drum Barracks , also known as Camp Drum and the Drum Barracks Civil War Museum , is the last remaining original American Civil War era military facility in the Los Angeles area . Located in the Wilmington section of Los Angeles , near the Port of Los Angeles , it has been designated as a California Historic Landmark , a Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places . Since 1987 , it has been operated as a Civil War museum that is open to the public . History . With the outbreak of the American Civil War in April 1861 , there were concerns on the Union side about the loyalty and security of the Los Angeles area . Many of the area ' s residents were recent arrivals from the Southern states , and southerner John C . Breckenridge received twice as many local votes as Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 Presidential election . A company of secessionists was also holding public drills in El Monte , California , displaying California ' s Bear flag instead of the Stars and Stripes . Phineas Banning , the founder of Wilmington ( then known as New San Pedro ) , wrote a letter to President Lincoln advising that the Union would lose California unless some provision was made to quell pro - Confederacy sentiment . Initially , the Union moved a garrison from Fort Tejon to Camp Latham near Culver City , California . Later in 1861 , Banning and Benjamin Davis Wilson , the first mayor of Los Angeles , donated in Wilmington to the government for one dollar each for use in construction of a Union garrison . By January 1862 , the military command had moved from Camp Latham to Camp Drum in Wilmington , and by March 1862 , all but one company of Camp Latham ' s troops had been moved to Camp Drum . The camp was built between 1862 and 1863 at a cost of $ 1 million and consisted of 19 buildings located on in Wilmington with another near the harbor . By March 1864 , official letters and papers referred to the encampment as Drum Barracks rather than Camp Drum . Camp Drum and Drum Barracks get their name from Col . Richard Coulter Drum , then Assistant Adjutant General of the Army ' s Department of the Pacific , stationed in San Francisco , and not after a percussion instrument . There is no record that Col . Drum ever saw or set foot in the station bearing his name . During the Civil War , Camp Drum was the headquarters of the District of Southern California and the home to the California Column , commanded by Colonel James Henry Carleton . Between 2 , 000 and 7 , 000 soldiers were stationed at Camp Drum , and Wilmington became a thriving community with a population greater than Los Angeles during the war . In 1862 , Texas Volunteers had taken control of large portions of New Mexico Territory ( which included present - day Arizona ) for the Confederacy , and Colonel Carleton was ordered to retake control of the territory . Approximately 2 , 350 soldiers from the California Column marched from Camp Drum and fought the Battle of Picacho Pass , the westernmost battle of the Civil War . In 1864 , the federal government feared attempts by Confederate sympathizers to outfit privateers to sink ships carrying gold and silver from the Comstock Lode to aid the Union . To deprive them of an anchorage , Company C , 4th California Infantry under Captain West , occupied Catalina Island on January 1 , 1864 , and put an end to gold mining by ordering everyone off the island . A small garrison of Union troops were stationed at Camp Santa Catalina Island on the isthmus on the island ' s west end for about nine months . Their barracks remain as the oldest structure on the island in the Two Harbors area and are currently the home of the Isthmus Yacht Club . Camp Drum also served as a deterrent to Confederate sympathizers in the Los Angeles area , helped keep the territory loyal to the Union , and prevented Confederate use of the Los Angeles harbor . After the Civil War , Camp Drum remained active for several years in the Indian Wars . By 1870 , it had been deactivated and fallen into disrepair . In October 1871 , the " Los Angeles Star " reported that all remaining troops at Drum Barracks had been ordered to Fort Yuma . In 1873 , the government returned the land to Banning and Wilson after auctioning off the buildings . Banning bought five of the buildings for $ 2 , 917 , and Wilson bought one for $ 200 . Historic designations , preservation and use as a museum . In 1927 , the Drum Barracks was designated a historic monument by the Native Sons of the Golden West , and in 1935 it was officially designated as California Historic Landmark # 169 . With the formation of the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission in 1962 , Drum Barracks was one of the first sites designated as a Historic Cultural Landmark ( HCM # 21 ) , receiving the monument designation in 1963 . It was also designated as and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 . In 1963 , the owner of the property offered the property for sale , and concerns arose about its potential demolition . Under the leadership of Walter Holstein , local residents formed The Society for The Preservation of Drum Barracks , raising funds to purchase the property . In 1967 , under the leadership of Oliver Vickery , curator of the Banning House , and Joan Lorenzen , the State of California purchased the Drum Barracks , with the Society retaining responsibility for maintenance and operation of the barracks as a historic site . In 1986 , the State turned over the property to the City of Los Angeles on the condition that it be operated as a Civil War museum . The surviving 16 - room structure was the officers ' quarters , which was once one of 19 similar buildings on the site . Today , the barracks is open as a museum which commemorates California ' s contribution to the Civil War . Disturbances . The surviving building holds a local reputation as the locale of various paranormal activity , with visitors and local residents claiming to hear the sound of rattling chains or wagon wheels and horses ' hooves , seeing smoke ( presumably from soldiers ' pipes ) , spotting apparitions of a woman in a hoop skirt , and smelling a strong lavender violet perfume . The Drum Barracks was profiled on " Unsolved Mysteries " in the early 1990s in a segment called ' Civil War Ghosts ' . Some of the people interviewed in that segment claimed to have seen apparitions of Civil War soldiers . In 2005 the Barracks was featured in an episode of " Most Haunted " .