The reef is located about 920 miles (1,480 km) southwest of Honolulu. It is a barren atoll with a deep lagoon (5 by 9.5 miles [8 by 15 km] and has a land area of 0.01 square mile (0.03 square km). It was sighted in 1798 by an American, Edmund Fanning, and was named for another American, W. Kingman, who first described it in 1853. Formally annexed by the United States in 1922, it became a U.S. naval reservation in 1934. In 1937–38 the lagoon was used for commercial purposes as a station for seaplanes flying between Hawaii and Samoa.