From Wikipedia: The town of Devens, Massachusetts is more locally known as Fort Devens. It is an inactive United States Army military installation in the towns of Ayer and Shirley, in Middlesex County and Harvard in Worcester County. It was named after jurist and Civil War general Charles Devens. The first military base on the site was established by Major Simon Willard, an English army officer, in 1656. Willard, a founder of the town of Concord, Massachusetts, was the commanding officer of "Willard’s Dragoons" of the Militia of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, one of the earliest organized military forces in central Massachusetts. Willard's home was situated near the Verbeck Gate of Fort Devens, and was destroyed in 1676 in a raid during King Philip's War. The U.S. Army post which resided at Fort Devens was officially closed in 1996 after 79 years of service. In January 2011 a group of Devens residents filed a citizens' petition for Devens to become a legally incorporated town. Efforts to make Devens the state's 352nd town failed on the local level in 2006. As of 2018, Devens is designated "a regional enterprise zone and census-designated place in the towns of Ayer and Shirley, in Middlesex County and Harvard in Worcester County," ergo not a town.
