The Second World War prompted the establishment of many new military installations throughout California and Nevada, including the Sierra Army Depot. It was built in Herlong, California in 1942 as a storage facility for ammunition. To learn more, we join professional historian Alicia Barber for this segment of Time & Place.

Located about sixty miles north of Reno, Herlong became one of the destinations for Italian prisoners of war who were captured overseas by the United States and their Allies. Mary Forson was hired as a clerk at the Depot in 1942 when she was just 21 years old, and she remembers the first prisoners showing up a few months later.