Mare Island Naval Shipyard

Mare Island is located on San Francisco Bay thirty-five miles northeast of San Francisco. The first European to see it was Don Perez de Ayala. He was exploring the area for Spain and on August 5, 1775, he gave it its original name, Isla Plana (flat island). Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo renamed Isla Plana "Isla de la Yegua" (island of the mare) after his wife's white mare, which swam over to the island in the mid-1830s.

When the Mexican War ended, Washington turned its attention to the development of the newly acquired territory of California. On December 2, 1851, President Millard Fillmore recommended the establishment of a navy yard, somewhere on the Pacific coast. As a result, 956 acres were purchased on Mare Island, on January 4, 1853, for $83,491.

In September of the following year, Comdr. David G. Farragut took command of Mare Island and began to construct navy yard facilities. For the 142 years, the shipyard built 512 ships and repaired hundreds more. Those ships fought in every conflict since the Civil War. Mare Island's first ship, the paddle-wheeled gunboat Saginaw, was launched before the Civil War, in 1859, and its last ship, the nuclear submarine U.S.S. Drum, was launched in 1970, during the Vietnam war.

The history of Mare Island Naval Shipyard includes warships that fought in the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I (where they set a record by launching the destroyer Ward in seventeen and a half days from keel laying). During World War II the shipyard repaired and returned to the battle lines 1,227 ships, including ships that were from various other countries (Denmark, Sweden, France, etc.). In addition to repairs, the shipyard built 17 submarines, 4 subtenders, 31 destroyer escorts, 33 small craft, and more than 300 landing craft. The 4,351 acre facility included shipyard and hospital areas which in the mid 1950s employed 13,000 civilian workers. Mare Island's high point in World War II had a shipyard population of 46,000.

The second half of the century brought the development of nuclear power to ship propulsion. Mare Island Naval Shipyard started an intensive training program to qualify its engineers and artisans to adapt this new technology to their ship building. Since 1958 it has built seventeen nuclear-powered submarines, including seven Fleet Ballistic Missile types.

In 1993, the Department of Defense (DoD) Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission recommended the closure of Mare Island NSY. The operational closure of Mare Island NSY was completed in April 1996. What remains is the problem of the hazardous wastes that the shipyard generated, including metal plating, lead acid battery repair, oil handling and reclamation, abrasive blasting, discharge of contaminated waste water to Mare Island Strait, landfill disposal of solvents (polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contaminated fluids, asbestos, and other hazardous wastes), disposal of contraband, miscellaneous ordnance, and mercuric substances, the detonation of projectiles, war-heads, and high explosives, and overhauling nuclear powered submarines.