San Francisco Naval Shipyard
| San Francisco Naval Shipyard | |
|---|---|
| San Francisco | |
2006 aerial view of the former San Francisco Naval Shipyard. View looking northeast.
|
|
| Coordinates | 37°43′32.18″N 122°22′8.19″W / 37.7256056°N 122.3689417°W |
| Type | Shipyard |
| Site information | |
| Controlled by | United States Navy |
| Site history | |
| Built | 1870 |
| In use | 1941–1974 |
| Battles/wars | World War I, World War II, Cold War |
The San Francisco Naval Shipyard was a United States Navy shipyard in San Francisco, located on 638 acres (258 ha) of waterfront at Hunters Point in the southeast corner of the city.
Originally, Hunters Point was a commercial shipyard established in 1870, consisting of two graving docks. It was purchased and built up in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by the Union Iron Works company, later owned by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Company and named Hunters Point Drydocks, located at Potrero Point.
The shipyard was purchased by the Navy in 1940, a year before the Attack on Pearl Harbor. It began operations the next year as the San Francisco Naval Shipyard, and operated until 1974 when it was deactivated and renamed Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Used commercially for a time, in 1986 it was taken over by the Navy again as the home port of the USS Missouri battlegroup, under the name Treasure Island Naval Station Hunters Point Annex.
The base was named redundant as part of the Base Realignment and Closure effort in 1991, and was closed permanently in 1994. Since then the site has been part of a superfund cleanup effort to remediate the leftovers of decades of industrial and radiological use. Parcels are being sold off as they are cleaned up, mostly for condominium development.
The original docks were built on solid rock. In 1916 the drydocks were thought to be the largest in the world. At over 1000 feet in length, they were said to be big enough to accommodate the world's largest warships and passenger steamers. Soundings showed an offshore depth of sixty-five feet. During the early 20th century much of the Hunters Point shoreline was extended by landfill extensions into the San Francisco Bay.
...
Wikipedia