Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot Annex

The Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot Annex, sometimes called the “Cohasset Annex” or "Hingham Annex" by local residents, was located between Cohasset, MA and Hingham, MA.

The land for the Annex was bought by the U.S. Navy in 1941, from local landowners, to expand the nearby Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot, in Hingham, MA. The Depot was the main ammunition supplier for U.S. Naval Forces, in the Atlantic, during World War II. A rail spur, sided off the Old Colony Greenbush Line, was built to facilitate the transfer of ammunition, stored in cement bunkers at the Annex, to the Depot at the Hingham Shipyard.

Reverted to maintenance status after the War, the Annex was reactivated for the Korean Conflict, during which time it held some of the Navy's first experimental nuclear depth charges, in bunker N9. Depth charges, bombs, and rocket motors were assembled at the Annex until declared surplus, by the Navy, in 1962. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts took possession of the Annex, in 1966, and turned the 3500 acres into the present day Wompatuck State Park.

Some old buildings, bunkers, and track exist today, and can be seen from some of the Park’s hiking trails or accessed from the end of Levitt Street, Hingham. The bunkers had, in recent years, been used as shelters by homeless people; following the grisly torture-murder of two homeless there in 2005, the authorities sealed off the remaining bunkers. [ [http://www.patriotledger.com/news/x2103872288 Reliability of key witness in slayings of 2 homeless men questioned - Quincy, MA - The Patriot Ledger ] ]

In the late 1990's the Government, who was in charge of the remaining section of the Depot that was not turned into Wompatuck, announced they were going to donate the remaining part to the park. This involved, first, cleaning the area, featuring the demolition of the remaining buildings, despite their historical value.

Images

External links

* [http://www.sackrabbit.com/wompatuck.html SackRabbit.com's summary of the site today. SackRabbit is dedicated to documenting such sites before they are lost to history.]
* [http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:YGU39xOFjh8J:yosemite.epa.gov/r1/npl_pad.nsf/0/d7da93374d1382f585256b4200604e1b%3FOpenDocument+asbestos+in+wompatuck&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us Info on the state and cleanup of the site.]
* [http://www.friendsofwompatuck.org/FOW2.PDF Friends of Wompatuck newsletter containing info on the bunker which once held an experimental nuclear depth charge.]

References