page_title: Naval Weapons Station Yorktown
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Naval Weapons Station Yorktown / History
caption_attribution_description: The U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer USS Dahlgren (DDG-43) tied up to a pier at the Naval Weapons Station Yorktown, Virginia (USA), in 1990.
context_page_description: Naval Weapons Station Yorktown is a United States Navy base in York County, James City County, and Newport News in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia. It provided a weapons and ammunition storage and loading facility for ships of the United States Atlantic Fleet, and more recently, for those from the Fleet Forces Command.
context_section_description: The site of NWS Yorktown is rich in colonial era (1607–1776) history, as well as that of the American Civil War (1861–1865). The station is located on the York River, in an area that was an early settlement of English colonists in Virginia.  They displaced the Algonquian-speaking Kiskiack and other American Indian tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy, who historically inhabited the area.
  The oldest structure at the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station is the brick "Kiskiack (Lee House)", built as a private residence in the late 17th century by English immigrant Henry Lee or his near descendants. At that time, the owner of the farm likely cultivated tobacco for export. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register. Descendants of the Lee family owned the property until its acquisition in 1918 by the federal government for the Navy Mine Depot.
  The colonial infantry of the American Revolutionary War and forces of the Civil War slogged along the Old Williamsburg Road that today runs through the station.
  
  Around 1914, the DuPont Company acquired a 4,000-acre (16 km²) site on the banks of the York River and built a dynamite plant, which came to be known as Penniman.  Before DuPont production started, the Navy acquired the site in August 1918 by presidential proclamation in response to the outbreak of World War I in Europe. This eventually developed as the largest naval installation in the world.
  The Navy acquired the property to establish the Navy Mine Depot, Yorktown at this site. The Navy planned to lay the North Sea Mine Barrage to protect commercial shipping and required an Atlantic Seaboard plant to support the effort. Here the mines would be stored, assembled, loaded, tested and issued to the Service. A related station was required for the training of personnel to adjust and operate the mines.  The Navy selected the DuPont site, about 18 square miles (47 km²) of area near Yorktown, Virginia, as the best location on the East Coast for its mine activities. The Bureau of Ordnance of the Navy Department assumed possession one month later.
  Yorktown was near the Navy Operating Base at Hampton Roads, the Norfolk Navy Yard, and the Fuel Bases of the Fifth Naval District. It had excellent transportation access, with the main lines of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad forming one of the boundaries of the Depot, and five miles (8 km) of waterfront on the navigable York River. Ocean-going vessels of largest dimension and deepest draft could navigate there.
  To make way for the new Mine Depot, the government acquired by eminent domain the property of many landowners along the former Yorktown-Williamsburg Road in nearby Lackey, Virginia. Both landowners and tenants in this area were primarily African American. (Since the late 19th century, this area had been locally known as "the Reservation".)  Assisted by self-educated farmer John Tack Roberts (born ca. 1860), many of the displaced residents of Lackey negotiated better financial compensation for their properties.  Many relocated to the community of Grove in nearby James City County. Another small community, also named Lackey, was later developed along the Yorktown Road a few miles away.
  As many as 10,000 personnel worked at the Naval facility during World War I. Many workers lived in the town of Penniman. After World War I and the Navy's shift away from mines, this community also vanished as workers moved away.  Halstead's Point, another community of workers on the station, also declined and disappeared.  It was located near the present main gate off State Route 143.
caption: USS Dahlgren at Naval Weapons Station Yorktown in 1990
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