The Lassen County business community courted the military over the years. During World War I attempts were made to establish a military training camp at Hackstaff, while that failed that location was not forgotten. In 1926, the Lake Denmark Naval Ammunition Depot in New Jersey was destroyed, the cause of a lightning strike. Twenty-one people were killed, and the damage in today’s dollars about a billion.
This changed everything when the government sought a location for a munitions depot in the west. The two important criteria was it to be an isolated location, but have railroad access. The top three sites examined were in the western Great Basin, and two were in close proximity of each other–Secret Valley, Flanigan and Hawthorne. In 1928, Hawthorne, Nevada was the victor. When World War II came along, saw the need for another Army Depot, and they selected Hackstaff in the Honey Lake Valley and it was subsequently renamed Herlong, after the first Ordnance officer killed in World War I.