{"id":1831,"slug":"heart-mountain-relocation-center-wyoming","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Heart Mountain was built in months — camp construction began June 1942, the first incarcerees arrived in August — a Wyoming camp that held about 14,000 Japanese Americans behind barbed wire until 1945. The file's documented spine is the incarceration itself: citizens imprisoned by their own government, in a camp named for the mountain that watched it.","The camp became the resistance's center — Heart Mountain held the largest draft-resistance group of the camps, the Fair Play Committee's stand being the file's documented conscience: incarcerees who refused the draft from inside the wire."]},{"heading":"The empty file","paragraphs":["The file's legend layer is empty — no ghosts, no apparitions — and the emptiness is the register. Heart Mountain's documented history is the record of the country's documented wrong; the haunting, if there is one, is the history itself.","The archive keeps the file for the opposite reason it keeps most: a place whose documented injustice needs no folklore, where the 14,000 incarcerated are the ledger and the resistance is the record's honor."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Heart Mountain is the file where the record is the horror — a camp that held citizens, produced the draft resistance's largest stand, and left a site whose emptiness is the testimony. No ghost stories are needed; the 1942–45 register is the whole file.","A camp that imprisoned its own citizens and produced the resistance that refused to serve while imprisoned — the file's suggestion being that some grounds are haunted by the record alone."]}],"name":"Heart Mountain Relocation Center","aliases":["Heart Mountain World War II Japanese American Confinement Site"],"type":"INCARCERATION_SITE","type_label":"Incarceration Site","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","DISPLACED_COMMUNITY","HISTORIC_SITE","INCARCERATION_SITE"],"groups":["dark-history","ghost-towns","institutions"],"desc":"Former Japanese American incarceration site between Powell and Cody.","full_desc":"An incarceration site in Powell, Wyoming, built in 1942, Heart Mountain Relocation Center is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Former Japanese American incarceration site between Powell and Cody. It sits in the archive under dark history, incarceration sites and displaced communities. The dossier holds 3 documented facts — a documented spine with no haunting reports attached. The site is open to visitors.","address":null,"city":"Powell","county":"Park","state":"Wyoming","postal":null,"region":"West","lat":44.6728,"lon":-108.9453,"coord_kind":"EXACT","status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":1942,"year_opened":1942,"year_closed":1945,"year_demolished":null,"designation":"National Historic Landmark","current_use":null,"research_notes":"NPS identifies public historic grounds and interpretive center. 1539 Road 19, Powell is the interpretive center address; not assigned to all camp ruins. Current visitor schedule pending.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"HIGH","score":80,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0.85,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"Camp construction began in June 1942; the first incarcerees arrived in August. The site became an important center of resistance to the military draft while civil rights were denied. Heart Mountain Relocation Center's past is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer beneath whatever lore attaches. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The record appears in 'Heart Mountain Relocation Center'. The detail belongs to the verified spine of the entry.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Heart Mountain Relocation Center","url":"https://www.nps.gov/places/heart-mountain-relocation-center.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}},{"description":"The camp operated 1942–1945 and held ~14,000 incarcerees, including the largest draft-resistance group of the camps. Heart Mountain Relocation Center's past is on record — the entry belongs to the verified layer beneath whatever lore attaches. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. The detail is preserved in 'Heart Mountain Relocation Center'. It's the sort of fact that gives the haunting reports their context.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1942","date_end":"1945","confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Heart Mountain Relocation Center","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Mountain_Relocation_Center","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}},{"description":"~14,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated at Heart Mountain from 1942 to 1945. The documented date is 1942-08-12–1945-11-10. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. The detail is preserved in 'Heart Mountain Interpretive Center'. It's the sort of fact that gives the haunting reports their context.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1942-08-12","date_end":"1945-11-10","confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Heart Mountain Interpretive Center","url":"https://www.heartmountain.org","publisher":"Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation","type":"MUSEUM","authority":2}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[{"name":"Heart Mountain incarceration","type":"INCARCERATION","date_start":"1942-08-12","date_end":"1945-11-10","description":"Heart Mountain began receiving incarcerees on August 12, 1942 — eventually confining some 14,000 people, most from California, on a windswept Wyoming flat beneath its namesake peak. It produced the largest draft-resistance movement of any camp — the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee — a fact the interpretive center now treats as central to its story.","evidence":"INCARCERATION","source":{"name":"Heart Mountain Interpretive Center","url":"https://www.heartmountain.org","publisher":"Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation","type":"MUSEUM","authority":2}}],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Site access varies; verify before visiting; check nps.gov for current hours and alerts.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Heart Mountain Relocation Center","url":"https://www.nps.gov/places/heart-mountain-relocation-center.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1},{"name":"Heart Mountain Relocation Center","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Mountain_Relocation_Center","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},{"name":"Heart Mountain Interpretive Center","url":"https://www.heartmountain.org","publisher":"Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation","type":"MUSEUM","authority":2}],"conflicts":[{"field_name":"place_type","existing_value":"INCARCERATION_SITE","incoming_value":"DETENTION_CAMP","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"short_description","existing_value":"Former Japanese American incarceration site between Powell and Cody.","incoming_value":"WWII camp that imprisoned 14,000 Japanese Americans.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"research_notes","existing_value":"NPS identifies public historic grounds and interpretive center. 1539 Road 19, Powell is the interpretive center address; not assigned to all camp ruins. Current visitor schedule pending.","incoming_value":"New record from encyclopedia/official-source pass; VERIFY task auto-queued for primary-source corroboration.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"short_description","existing_value":"Former Japanese American incarceration site between Powell and Cody.","incoming_value":"The Wyoming camp where 14,000 Japanese Americans were confined.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"full_description","existing_value":"From 1942 to 1945, Heart Mountain held ~14,000 Japanese Americans in tarpaper barracks on a Wyoming hillside—one of ten WRA camps of the wartime incarceration. The interpretive center preserves the story; a smokestack and foundations survive.","incoming_value":"Heart Mountain is the Park County internment site where ~14,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated 1942–45—one of ten War Relocation Authority camps, preserved with an interpretive center.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"current_status","existing_value":"HISTORIC_SITE","incoming_value":"ACTIVE","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"research_notes","existing_value":"NPS identifies public historic grounds and interpretive center. 1539 Road 19, Powell is the interpretive center address; not assigned to all camp ruins. Current visitor schedule pending.","incoming_value":"Lore enrichment wave 2; VERIFY task auto-queued.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."}],"wiki":{"title":"Heart Mountain Relocation Center","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Mountain_Relocation_Center","desc":"Historic place in Wyoming, United States","extract":"The Heart Mountain War Relocation Center, named after nearby Heart Mountain and located midway between the northwest Wyoming towns of Cody and Powell, was one of ten concentration camps used for the internment of Japanese Americans evicted during World War II from their local communities in the West Coast Exclusion Zone by the executive order of President Franklin Roosevelt.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Heart_mountain_marker_with_mountain_behind.jpg/330px-Heart_mountain_marker_with_mountain_behind.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":93,"lat":44.67166667,"lon":-108.94638889},"counts":{"claims":0,"history":3,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":3}}