Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Lakehurst, NJ

Lakehurst is a borough in Ocean County that proudly calls itself the "Airship Capital of the World."

Lakehurst was incorporated on April 7, 1921, from portions of Manchester Township, and its name describes its setting among lakes and pine woods.

The borough is completely surrounded by Manchester Township, making it one of New Jersey's 21 pairs of "doughnut towns" where one municipality entirely encircles another.

Lakehurst first won international fame as a winter resort around the turn of the 20th century, following the opening of the Pine Tree Inn in 1898.

Naval Air Station Lakehurst, commissioned in 1921 in neighboring Manchester Township, became the hub of the Navy's lighter-than-air program, and its Hangar No. 1 — 961 feet long, 350 feet wide and 200 feet high — was built to house the giant rigid airships.

On May 6, 1937, the German zeppelin Hindenburg, the largest airship ever built, burst into flames while attempting to land at Lakehurst, killing 36 people and ending the era of passenger airship travel.

In 1929 Lakehurst hosted the Graf Zeppelin during the first round-the-world airship voyage, and it was the only American stop for German commercial airships.

Hangars 5 and 6 at Lakehurst, built in 1943, rank among the largest single-arch wooden structures in the world.

In 2009 the Lakehurst naval station merged with Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base to form Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, the nation's first tri-service joint base.

The borough's own lake is Lake Horicon, a stream-fed cedar-water lake documented in aerial photographs as far back as 1931.