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Mare Island is a peninsula alongside the city of Vallejo, California, about 23 miles northeast of San Francisco. The Napa River forms its eastern side as it enters the Carquinez Strait juncture with the east side of San Pablo Bay. Mare Island is considered a peninsula because no full body of water separates this or several other named "islands" from the mainland. Instead, a series of small slough causes seasonal flows among the so-called Islands. Mare Island is the largest of these at about 3.5 miles long and a mile wide.

This area was part of Rancho Soscol, deeded to General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo in 1844. According to the story, his favorite white mare fell off a raft while being transported across the Carquinez Straits and avoided drowning by swimming to an island, which he named Isla de la Yegua (Mare Island) in her honor.

The Napa River widens and forms an excellent harbor between Mare Island and the mainland.

Contents 1 History 2 Late years 3 Access 4 References 5 External links

On November 6, 1850, two months after California was admitted to statehood, President Fillmore reserved Mare Island for government use. The United States bought Mare Island in July, 1852, for use as a naval shipyard. Two years later, on September 16, 1854, Mare Island became the first permanent U.S. naval installation on the west coast, with Admiral David G. Farragut,(then Commodore), United States Navy, as Mare Island's first base commander. Twelve years later, during the US Civil War, (US) Admiral Farragut would gain fame during the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864, with his order of "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!"

For more than a century, Mare Island was the United States Navy's Mare Island Naval Shipyard. The growing size and number of the country's naval fleet was making older facilities obsolete and led to increased building and refitting of shipyards nationally. A 508-foot drydock was built by the Public Works Department on a excellent rock foundation of cut granite blocks. The work took nineteen years and was completed in 1891. During the Spanish American War, a concrete drydock on wooden piles, 740 feet long, was completed after eleven years of work, in 1910. By 1941, a third drydock had been completed and drydock number four was under construction. The ammunitions depot and submarine repair base were modern, fireproof buildings. A million dollar three-way vehicle causeway to Vallejo was completed.

Before World War 2, Mare Island had been in a constant state of upbuilding. By 1941, new projects included improvements to the central power plant, a new pattern storage building, a large foundry, machine shop, magazine building, paint shop, new administration building and a huge storehouse. The yard was expected to be able to repair and paint six to eight large naval vessels at a time. Several finger piers had recently been built, as well as a new shipbuilding wharf, adding one 500-foot and a 750-foot berth. It employed 5593 workers at the beginning of 1939, and rapidly increased to 18,500 busily engaged by May, 1941 with a monthly payroll of $3,500,000(1941). Then came Pearl Harbor. In 1941, the drafting department had expanded to three buildings accommodating over 400 Naval architects, engineers and draftsmen. The hospital carried 584 bed patients.

By the early years of the 1940s, Mare Island had constructed eighty-nine sea-going vessels, among the more important keels laid:

• 1858 USS Saginaw, Frigate - wood
• 1872 USS Mohican, Frigate - wood
• 1875 USS Monadnock, Monitor - wood
• 1886 USS Cosmos, Revenue cutter - wood
• 1904 USS Intrepid, Training ship - steel
• 1907 USS Prometheus, Collier - steel
• 1911 USS Jupiter,(aka. Langley) Collier - steel
• 1913 USS Kanawha, Tanker steel (for Japan)
• 1913 USS Guard, Revenue cutter - steel
• 1913 USS Palos, Gunboat steel
• 1913 USS Monocacy, Gunboat - steel
• 1914 USS Maumee, Tanker - steel
• 1915 USS Cuyama, Tanker steel
• 1916 USS Shaw, Destroyer - steel
• 1916 USS California, Battleship - steel (32,500 ton)
• 1916 USS Caldwell, Destroyer - steel
• 1917 (15)sub-chasers, Chasers - wood
• 1917 USS Fairfax, USS Taylor, Boggs, Kilty. Ward(1918), Kennison(1918), Claxton(1918), Hamilton(1918), Litchfield(1919), Zane(1919), Wasmuth(1919), Trever(1919), Perry(1920), Decatur(1920), Montana(1920)(scrapped by London disarmament treaty) Destroyers - steel (43,200-ton)
• 1927 USS Nautilus Submarine - steel
• 1928 USS Chicago Cruiser - steel
• 1931 USS San Francisco Cruiser - steel
• 1934 USS Smith, Destroyer - steel
• 1934 USS Preston, Destroyer - steel
• 1935 USS Henley, Destroyer - steel
• 1936 USS Pompano, Submarine - steel
• 1936 USS Sturgeon, Submarine - steel
• 1937 USS Swordfish, Submarine - steel
• 1939 USS Fulton, Submarine tender - steel
• 1939 USS Tuna, Submarine - steel
• 1939 USS Gudgeon, Submarine - steel

In 1969, the US Navy transferred its (Vietnam War) Brown Water Navy Riverine Training Forces from Coronado, California to Mare Island. Swift Boats (Patrol Craft Fast-PCF), and PBR's (Patrol Boat River), among other types of riverine craft, conducted boat operations through out the currently named Napa-Sonoma Marshes State Wildlife Area, which are located on the north and west portions of Mare Island. USS Midway nuclear engineer Bruce Hills Easley served at the base during this time. Mare Island Naval Base was deactivated during the 1995 cycle of US base closures, but the US Navy Reserves still have access to the water portions of the State Wildlife Area for any riverine training being conducted from their new base in Sacramento, California.

Mare Island can be accessed by State Route 37 on its north side, as well as by Interstate 80 via the Mare Island Causeway and Tennessee Street, a designated route.

Mare Island is also the home of Touro University and the new administrative offices of the Vallejo City Unified School District.

For information on visiting Mare Island, see:

• Mare Island Historic Park Foundation

For information on the Historic Nature of Vallejo, see:

• Vallejo Architectural Heritage Foundation
• Vallejo City Park Preservation site

• Steffes, James, ENC Retired: "Swift Boat Down- The Real Story of the Sinking of PCF-19." (2006) ISBN 1-59926-612-1.
• 1941 Society of Naval Architects Buletin, Harold W. Linnehan, writing as a visitor from Design section, Mare Island California

• Mare Island is at coordinates 38°05′43″N 122°16′41″W / 38.095254, -122.278004Coordinates: 38°05′43″N 122°16′41″W / 38.095254, -122.278004