Picatinny Arsenal: America's Gunpowder Brain

Tucked into the Morris County hills since eighteen eighty, Picatinny Arsenal began as a simple powder depot, storing explosive materials for the Army at a safe distance from the population of New York and New Jersey. In nineteen oh seven the facility became a full arsenal, and by the First World War it had added testing laboratories and a school to train officers in the sciences of munitions. The Second World War transformed it into an industrial juggernaut: eighteen thousand workers ran three shifts around the clock producing bombs and artillery shells, while researchers developed specialized delay fuzes and penetrating bombs for attacking dams and oil fields.

After the war Picatinny refocused almost entirely on research and development. Today it serves as the Army's Joint Center of Excellence for Guns and Ammunition, designing everything from small-caliber cartridges to large-caliber artillery rounds. Nearly a century and a half after its founding, the arsenal remains one of the most consequential weapons-research addresses in American military history.