Prison on the Prairie

For 70 years, the Savanna Army Depot was the chief employer for a rural area in northwestern Illinois. During World War II, more than 7,000 civilians worked there. The civilians made the bombs the B-25 planes led by Jimmy Dootlittle dropped on Japan during the famous raid in 1942.

When the Army ordered the depot closed in 1995, 421 people lost their jobs. A regional development authority proposed building a state prison on the depot site to replace the jobs, but several environmental group...