Hunters Point Naval Shipyard facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Hunters Point Naval Shipyard |
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| San Francisco | |
Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in 2020
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| 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 Hunters Point Naval Shipyard was a very important shipyard for the United States Navy. It was located in San Francisco, California, (USA), on a large piece of land (about 638 acres) right by the water at Hunters Point.
This shipyard started as a business in 1870. It had two special docks called graving docks, which are like giant bathtubs that can be drained to work on ships. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, a company called Union Iron Works bought and improved it. Later, it was owned by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Company and was known as Hunters Point Drydocks.
People even called it "The World's Greatest Shipping Yard"! In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt trusted his famous Great White Fleet of battleships to be fixed and maintained at Hunters Point.
The Navy bought the shipyard in 1940, just a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor that started World War II for the U.S. It began working for the Navy in 1941 as the San Francisco Naval Shipyard. It kept operating until 1974 when it was closed down and renamed Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. For a while, it was used by businesses again. Then, in 1986, the Navy took it over one more time as a home base for the USS Missouri battleship group. At that time, it was called Treasure Island Naval Station Hunters Point Annex.
In 1991, the base was chosen to be closed as part of a program to reorganize military bases. It officially closed for good in 1994. Since then, the site has been part of a huge cleanup project called a superfund effort. This project aims to clean up harmful materials left behind from many years of industrial and nuclear work. Parts of the land have been sold off after they were cleaned, mostly for building new homes like condominiums.
History of the Shipyard
The first docks at Hunters Point were built on very strong rock. In 1916, these drydocks were thought to be the biggest in the world. They were over 1,000 feet long, which was big enough for the largest warships and passenger ships of the time. The water offshore was also very deep, about sixty-five feet. In the early 1900s, much of the Hunters Point shoreline was made bigger by adding landfill (dirt and waste materials) into the San Francisco Bay.
Between World War I and the start of World War II, the Navy rented the docks from their private owners. These docks were important because they offered deep-water facilities between San Diego and Bremerton, Washington. The main naval base nearby was at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, but that area often had too much silt (mud) in the water, making it only good for ships that didn't need very deep water.
When World War II began, the Navy realized it needed many more places to build and fix ships in the San Francisco Bay Area. So, in 1940, the Navy bought the property from its private owners and named it Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. This shipyard became one of the most important shipyards on the West Coast. During the 1940s, many people moved to the area to work at this shipyard and other factories helping with the war effort.
In July 1945, important parts for the first atomic bomb were loaded onto the USS Indianapolis at Hunters Point. These parts were then taken to Tinian, an island in the Pacific. After World War II, and until 1969, the Hunters Point shipyard was home to the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory. This was the U.S. military's largest place for studying how to use nuclear science. The shipyard was also used to clean up ships that had been exposed to radiation during nuclear tests called Operation Crossroads. Because of all this testing and work, the site has widespread contamination from radioactive materials. After the war, the area continued to be a naval base and a place for commercial ship repair.
In 1947, a huge crane was built at the shipyard by the American Bridge Company. This crane could lift 450 tons! It was the biggest crane in the world at the time. It was designed to lift the heavy gun turrets off battleships so the guns could be quickly replaced or fixed. This crane was so big that it could be seen for miles around.
In 1959, this giant crane was used for something called Operation Skycatch. During this operation, fake Polaris missiles were launched and then caught by a series of cables. This allowed them to be lowered safely to the ground for testing. Later, in 1967, a large frame was added to the top of the crane for testing UGM-73 Poseidon missiles. In 1985, another frame was built on top for testing Trident missiles, making the crane nearly 500 feet tall. This made it one of the tallest man-made structures in San Francisco, almost as tall as the Golden Gate Bridge!
The Navy used the shipyard for repairs until 1974. Then, they rented most of it to a company that fixed ships, and that company used it until 1986. The Hunters Point Shipyard was briefly reopened between 1986 and 1989 as an annex to Naval Station Treasure Island.
Today, the Hunters Point Shipyard Artists (HPSA) is a group of artists who rent studios in the old shipyard buildings. This artist community has been there since 1983 and now has more than 250 artists.
In 1987, the Navy thought about making the shipyard the home base for the battleship USS Missouri (BB-63), which was being reactivated. However, there were disagreements about who would pay for the improvements needed for the base. In 1989, the base was officially named a Superfund site. This meant it needed a long-term cleanup because of pollution.
The Navy finally closed the shipyard and base in 1994. Besides the radioactive contamination, the shipyard also had pollution from power plants that burned coal and oil. These plants left behind harmful waste and smoke. The Superfund program has been in charge of most of the cleanup projects at the site.
Shipyard Redevelopment
As of 2020, the old shipyard site is still being cleaned up. It has been divided into smaller sections so the Navy can declare them clean and safe one by one. A company called Lennar has built and sold many new homes (condominiums) in the SF Shipyard development on the property.
However, some people, including government regulators, community activists, and cleanup workers, have raised concerns. They believe the site might still be very contaminated. There have been claims that the company hired to do the cleanup and testing, Tetra Tech, did not always follow the rules for testing. There were also concerns that some test results might not have been accurate, and that employees who tried to make sure tests were done correctly were sometimes fired. The Navy stated that a small number of the many soil samples collected over two decades were found to be "anomalous," meaning they were unusual.
New homes were planned to be ready for people to move into in late 2014 or early 2015. The first residents actually started moving in during June 2015.
In September 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stopped the Navy from transferring more land at Hunters Point to the city and to developers. The EPA wanted to make sure that the public's possible exposure to radioactive material at and near the shipyard was fully understood and clarified before more land was handed over.
