What is Loc?

Loc. is an abbreviation for Location. It was created during the WWII modernization program to help organize land reservations owned by the Army that was part of Coast Defense. Interestingly, this system was not used outside of the Northeast. Loc. 1 was in the HD of NY and Loc. 170 was in the HD of Portland. This is commonly misinterpreted as a structure number. For example, the Fire Control Station at Castle Hill (Loc. 137) is not the 137th station, but rather the 137th military reservation. Even then it is not completely accurate. Not only is there Loc. 137 Castle Hill, but there is also Loc. 137A Plum Island and Loc. 137B Salisbury Beach. Not every location number is like 137, most don't have A or B (some locations in the HD of New Bedford go to D!). Some forts can even be split up into two location numbers. For example, Fort Dearborn is Loc. 143 and Loc. 144. This is because part of the fort is at Loc. 143 Odiorne's Point and the other part is Loc. 144 Frost Point. It is a very useful form of identification because landform names can be used more than once. For example, there is Loc. 166 Long Island in Maine, Loc. 122 Fort Strong on Long Island in MA and in NY is Long Island which has a few different Locs not covered on this site. Basically, if you know what it means and how to use it, it can be a very useful tool for identification.