Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot Annex

The Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot Annex, sometimes called the “Cohasset Annex” or "Hingham Annex" by local residents, covered sections of the towns of  Hingham, Cohasset, Norwell, and Scituate Massachusetts. It served as an annex to the Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot.

Beginnings
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. The Depot was the main ammunition supplier for Naval Forces of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, during World War II, employing 2,091 civilians along with 721 naval officers and sailors and 375 Marine guards at its peak in June, 1945. 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.

Reactivation
Reverted to maintenance status after the War, the Annex was reactivated for the Korean War, 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.

Post-Closure Usage
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts took possession of the Annex, in 1966, and later turned the 3500 acre into the present day Wompatuck State Park. The last military activity at the Annex took place when the U.S. Army Reserve 187th Infantry Brigade was stationed at United States Army Reserve Center Hingham from 1971 to 1982.

In the late 1990s the government, who were 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. This task has not been fully accomplished to date.

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. Bunkers here as well as thoses in the remains of the original Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot (in Wompatuck State Park), had been used as shelters for homeless persons. Following the grisly torture-murder of two homeless men in Bare Cover Park in 2005, the remaining bunkers in Bare Cove Park have been demolished. However, local Boy Scouts have worked to preserve some of these bunkers, including N9, as a memorial to the military and civilian personnel who served at the Depot.