Liegan was a  Nevada-California-Oregon Railway (NCO) station that was located a bit north and east of present day Herlong.  On September 10, 1888 it became the new terminus for the railroad. It was a desolate outpost to say the least, surrounded by miles and miles of sagebrush, but not a single living soul in the immediate region. Of course, the decision of the NCO to bypass the west side of Honey Lake for the east drew lots of criticism, a topic for another time. Its location was too remote for the railroad to generate any freight traffic. One of its biggest claim to fame occurred on January 1, 1890 when numerous sight seers from Reno ventured there to view the eclipse of the sun. By that summer, the railroad extended its line farther north to Amedee, which quickly overshadowed Liegan. In the fall of 1890, Elmer Koken who traveled to Amedee on the NCO remarked that the Liegan station consisted of a box car. On April 9, 1891, the Liegan Post Office closed after an existence of eight months.

There was a glimmer of hope and Liegan would be  revived in 1909-10 by the railroad. The Standish Water Company had just built a pumping plant on Honey Lake, near there with the intention to reclaim the sagebrush plain into a major sugar beet production region. That failed, and Liegan’s hopes too. It is interesting that a 1915 soil survey designates the site as Italy.

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