United States Secret Service James J. Rowley Training Center, Maryland

This site has been used as a training center by the Secret Service since 1971. Though training for agents also takes place at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia, this facility is for more specialized training in the service. Facilities on site include a mock presidential helicopter and presidential jetliner (just the front portion of the aircraft); a mock village, composed mostly of roads and facades representing different types of buildings and road intersections; an overpass with djacent drainage culverts; a driver training course; a large driving skid pad; classroom buildings; and a munitions storage area. The Secret Service was established in 1865, as part of the Treasury Department, to investigate counterfeiting of US currency, but its role soon expanded to “detecting persons perpetrating frauds against the government”. It expanded to the protection of the President in 1901, following the assassination of President William McKinley, the third president to be assassinated while in office (and not the last). The agency is also now charged with protecting many other important members of the federal government, as well as foreign heads of state visiting the US, and the critical  financial infrastructure of the US, too. In 2003, the agency was transferred from the Treasury to the Department of Homeland Security. This facility is one of dozens of unusual sites scattered in and around the 7,000 acres of the US Department of Agriculture’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center.