 It serves as a waypoint for grassland-dependent migratory birds.The refuge first became federal property in the early 1940s, when the Army bought what was then swampland and filled it in with soil from the nearby flood plains to build Galeville Army Air Field to train pilots as a result of World War II.It stopped using the field years after the war, in the early 1970s and in later years it would be used by the nearby United States Military Academy.