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 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