Fort Knox Military Base Kentucky Every Memorial Day the Fort Knox military base opens up their restricted areas for several hours to civilians to have access to the over one hundred cemeteries on the post. While the primary purpose of our trip was to check out the cemeteries, we ran across quite a few of these abandoned tanks along the sides of the road while we were driving.
While most of the public is familiar with Fort Knox as the location where the U.S. Treasury has their bullion depositary guarded, it is also a military base that housed the Armor School up until 2010. The road we were driving was right on the border of the area used for artillery and armor fire, which explains why the tanks were close by. While many of the tanks we passed did have more extensive damage, indicating they may have been used as hard targets, these tanks didn't display any signs that they were on the firing line. These tanks may have been used in recovery exercises, or their time may have never came to be used as targets.