Clearfield's Wartime Depot

Clearfield was a quiet farming town called Sand Ridge until the Second World War reshaped it. Construction started on Hill Air Force Base along Clearfield's eastern border in nineteen forty. Then in nineteen forty-three the United States Navy commissioned the Clearfield Naval Supply Depot on the southwestern side of town, chosen for its distance from any coast, its proximity to Hill Field's air transport, and its access to major rail lines.

At its peak the depot covered six hundred eighty acres with seventy-eight buildings totaling over seven million square feet, each warehouse built with a railroad dock on one side and a truck dock on the other. It supplied the Pacific Fleet. The depot closed in nineteen sixty-two and became the Freeport Center, named for Utah's Freeport Law exempting warehouse inventory from property taxes, a deliberate draw for manufacturers. Today about seventy companies operate there, including Northrop Grumman Aerospace Structures. The war built Clearfield; the depot still employs around seven thousand people.