More than 2,500 San Diego construction workers have found work at Camp Pendleton, in the Marine Corps base’s largest reconstruction effort since the Vietnam War.

Situated south of Orange County, the base is home to 60,000 people, including 33,000 Marines and 3,000 Navy sailors. As one of the nation’s largest, the base has 14 chapels, 11 fire stations and six child-care centers. It can take about 45 minutes to drive across the base, which is about half the size of Los Angeles.

The base is currently constructing five barracks and has plans for spending $2.7 billion to build 64 facilities, including 19 barracks next year alone. Nearly 1,000 new homes are also planned for Marine families. In all, the projects could entail at least 10,000 construction jobs over the next two to three years.

With the military construction boom, the San Diego area, which was one of the first in the region to fall into a recession, could be the first to emerge from it.