Hawthorne Army Depot

Hawthorne Army Depot stores reserve ammunitions to be used after the first 30 days of a major conflict.

The center's capabilities include demilitarization, desert training for military units, ammunition renovation, quality assurance, ISO intermodal container maintenance and repair, and range scrap processing.

[2] A major disaster occurred at the United States Navy's Lake Denmark Naval Ammunition Depot in New Jersey in 1926.

The accident virtually destroyed the depot, causing heavy damage to the adjacent Picatinny Arsenal and the surrounding communities, killing 21 people and seriously injuring 53 others.

In accordance with the court of inquiry's recommendation, construction of the Hawthorne Naval Ammunition Depot (NAD) began in July 1928 in a 327-square-mile (850 km2) area of Nevada under U.S. Navy jurisdiction.

The mission, as stated in a 1962 Navy Command History, was to "receive, renovate, maintain, store and issue ammunition, explosives, expendable ordnance items and/or weapons and technical ordnance material and perform additional tasks as directed by the Bureau of Naval Weapons."

However, the depot was subsequently dropped from the BRAC list, primarily due to the base's capability to support pre-deployment training for Operation Enduring Freedom-bound U.S. Marine Corps units (by the Mountain Warfare Training Center) as well as Navy and Army special operations forces.

On 18 March 2013, seven U.S. Marines were killed and at least eight were wounded when a mortar exploded during a live-fire training exercise at the Hawthorne Army Depot.

Before the facility became contractor-operated, it was staffed primarily by United States federal civil service workers and military personnel who were housed on government-owned property neighboring Hawthorne, including the now-abandoned town of Babbitt and military housing known as Schweer Drive.

The local Sixth Street School (whose building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places) was expanded to serve the growing population.