Construction of the Camp Maxey started on 27 February 1942, and on 2 April 1942, the facility near Paris, Texas was named Camp Maxey in honor of Confederate Brigadier General Samuel Bell Maxey. The first US Army personnel to manage the new reservation arrived on 4 July 1942. The post was activated by the US Army on 15 July 1942, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Callie H. Palmer.
The first division to be trained at the 70,000 acre camp, the 102nd Infantry Division, was organized and activated on September 15, 1942. The Ninety-ninth Infantry Division arrived at the camp in November 1943. The varied terrain provided facilities for working out problems of infantry training to meet modern battle conditions. An artillery range, obstacle course, infiltration course, and "German Village" were included in training maneuvers. In total, the camp had a capacity to train about 45,000 soldiers.
In addition to the army ground forces trained at Camp Maxey, army service forces and army air forces had a part in the development of camp activities. German prisoners of war were also held at the military reservation at a site near the south end of the camp’s cantonment. POWs at Camp Maxey (as at other sites) were kept busy working and via other activities. Some POWs worked in a lumber mill.
The camp was put on an inactive status on October 1, 1945, following the end of the war and the POWs were returned to Europe in 1946. The camp sat empty, but intact, for several years after the war. During the 1950s, the federal government began the final process of dismantling the Camp Maxey cantonment and selling off the land and returning some to former owners. More than 1,000 buildings were sold for demolition, and some were moved for relocation as public facilities. Several thousand acres were kept intact by the federal government, including the old post command buildings and vehicle shops near Gate 5 (current National Guard Camp Maxey Training Center Headquarters’ and cantonment area), and turned over to the Texas National Guard for a training facility. In the early 1960s, some 10,000 acres of the old artillery range on the north side of the former camp along Sanders Creek, conveniently without improvements or public access for the past 20 years, were transferred to the US Army Corps of Engineers for construction of the Pat Mayse Reservoir. This reduced the size of Camp Maxey to about 6,650 acres.
Presently, the installation serves as a training center for the Texas National Guard. The base offers a gas chamber for training, pistol and rifle ranges, and navigation testing zones. The camp's responsibility is to provide training facilities to units in Northeast Texas region from DFW to Marshall to Texarkana. This area involves various types of units, i.e. infantry, engineer, and other support units.