After a lightning strike set off millions of pounds of explosives at the Navy’s Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, the remote town of Hawthorne Nevada was chosen to host the Navy’s West Coast ordinance supply.

First operational in 1930, this depot was the staging site for most of the munitions used by the United States during World War II. The landscape now pockmarked by over 2400 bunkers serves to store a tremendous amount of reserve ammunition and supplies for the US Military.

With an M47 Patton tank standing vigil by the road, the Hawthorne Ordnance Museum stands as a monument to this massive depot and how it came to be. The museum features a wide range of weaponry and ordinance from missiles and bombs to shells for battleship guns.