Fort Mason
Fort Mason, in San Francisco, California is a former United States Army post located in the northern Marina District, alongside San Francisco Bay. Fort Mason served as an Army post for more than 100 years, initially as a coastal defense site[3] and subsequently as a military port facility. During World War II, it was the principal port for the Pacific campaign.[2]
This article is about the fort in California. For the fort in Arizona, see Fort Mason, Arizona Territory. For the fort in Texas, see Fort Mason (Texas).
Fort Mason originated as a coastal defense site during the American Civil War. The nucleus of the property was owned by John C. Frémont and disputes over compensation by the United States continued into 1968. In 1882 the defenses were named for Richard Barnes Mason, a military governor before statehood. Fort Mason became the headquarters for an Army command that included California and the Hawaiian Islands from 1904 to 1907. In 1912 the Army began building a port facility with piers and warehouses to be a home base for ships of the Army Transport Service serving Alaska, Hawaii, the Philippines and other Pacific Army posts and focus of Army supply for the Pacific.
On 6 May 1932 that port facility was designated the San Francisco Port of Embarkation, modeled on the New York Port of Embarkation which supplied U.S. Army forces in World War I, to serve the Pacific. Fort Mason then became both the headquarters of the command that was the San Francisco Port of Embarkation and an element of that command. The San Francisco Port of Embarkation assumed responsibility for the Army Transport Service, the San Francisco General Quartermaster Depot at Fort Mason and the Overseas Replacement and Discharge Service at Fort McDowell, California. When war came to Europe in 1939 the New York Port of Embarkation was again operating as a port of embarkation on a World War I scale with associated camps and facilities and sub ports soon to be established. On the Pacific only the port at San Francisco was operating. The Army recognized that the relatively small port facility at Fort Mason was inadequate for supporting major wartime operations in the Pacific. In early 1941 the Army began acquiring land and facilities for major expansion in Oakland, Seattle and elsewhere in the San Francisco area. By the end of the war Fort Mason and thirteen other facilities composed the San Francisco Port of Embarkation.
The San Francisco Port of Embarkation was the second largest of eight Ports of Embarkation through World War II and was disestablished 1 October 1955. It then became headquarters for the Pacific Transportation Terminal Command.
Today it is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the site of several cultural facilities. The entire fort area is listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places,[2] with 49 buildings of historic significance, spread over 1,200 acres (490 ha).[4][5] while the lower port area is a National Historic Landmark District, designated for its role in World War II.
History[edit]
Earlier private ownership by John C. Frémont[edit]
The nucleus of Fort Mason was a private property owned by John C. Frémont, the explorer of the western U.S., who also spearheaded the conquest of California from Mexico, and ran as the first presidential nominee of the extant Republican Party in 1856. As alleged in a 1968 federal lawsuit[6] filed by his descendants over the 70-acre parcel then at issue, Frémont bought a 13.5-acre property in the mid-1850s for $42,000, and then improved it by about $40,000.
Appointed a major general in the Union army at the start of the Civil War, Frémont's repeated serious conflicts with President Lincoln led him to resign by late 1862. In 1863, the government seized the property without payment, by executive order of Lincoln, on the grounds it was needed for the war effort. Frémont would again contest the US presidency in 1864, running as the candidate of Radical Democracy Party, only resigning the effort when Lincoln fired a political enemy in his cabinet as a concession.
The 1968 lawsuit was perhaps the last shot of a century-long legal struggle[7] to obtain compensation for the seized realty. In 1870, the government returned property to 49 parties in the vicinity, but not to Frémont and a few others. At that time, Frémont was still very preoccupied with enough of the vast fortune he had made through gold-mining before the Civil War that the matter was unlikely of concern to him; but by 1872[8] he was in grave financial trouble he would never escape before his death in 1890. Over the years, at least 24 Congressional committees would vote to compensate Frémont, and finally in February 1898 President William McKinley signed a bill directing that the court of claims fix the compensation due. But in 1968 the Frémont heirs complained it had failed to carry out this direction, with John Frémont then recently dead and his widow Jessie over 70 years old.
The fort as government property[edit]
The Civil War prompted the construction of several coastal defense batteries located inside the Golden Gate. Initially these defenses were built as temporary wartime structures rather than permanent fortifications and one of these was constructed in 1864 at Point San Jose, as the location of Upper Fort Mason was then known. A breast-high wall of brick and mounts for six 10-inch (250 mm) Rodman cannons and six 42-pounder guns were built on the site. Excavation in the early 1980s uncovered the well-preserved remains of the western-half of the temporary battery, and it has now been restored to its condition during the Civil War.[9]
The fort was named Fort Mason in 1882, after Richard Barnes Mason, a former military governor of California.[10]
President Grover Cleveland established the Endicott Board in 1885 for the purpose of modernizing the nation's coastal fortifications. Chaired by Secretary of War William Endicott, the board recommended new defenses at 22 U.S. seaports, deeming San Francisco Harbor second only to that of New York in strategic importance. As a result, an extensive series of forts, batteries, and guns were built on the harbor, including Fort Mason.[11]
In 1904, the previous Division of the Pacific (1869–91) was re-established and formally stood up as the Pacific Division with subordinate or related commands, including the Department of California (to include the Hawaiian Islands) and the Department of the Columbia.[12] The Pacific Division was headquartered at Fort Mason, San Francisco.[13] By the end of 1907, the War Department, under Secretary of War William Howard Taft, had eliminated the echelon of administrative units called Divisions and subsequently the Pacific Division that same year.[14] Notably, the first and only commander of the Pacific Division was Major General Arthur MacArthur Jr from 1903 to 1907.[15]
The piers and sheds of Lower Fort Mason were originally built from 1912 to warehouse army supplies and provide docking space and a base for ships of the Army Transport Service. By this time, the US Army began to build new posts in Hawaii, the Philippines, and various other Pacific islands. Most of the materiel for those posts was shipped through San Francisco. By 1915, the three piers together with their associated warehouse had been completed, and Fort Mason Tunnel driven under Upper Fort Mason to connect with the State Belt Railroad along the Embarcadero.
With these new facilities, Fort Mason was transformed from a harbor defense post into a logistical and transport hub for American military operations in the Pacific.[16] The Army ferry USAT General Frank M. Coxe provided scheduled transportation from Fort Mason to the processing center at Fort McDowell on Angel Island up to eight times per day during the war. USAT Meigs was used to transport cavalry horses from Fort Mason's pier to Fort Mills.
Future developments[edit]
A proposal exists to extend the F Market & Wharves or E Embarcadero historic streetcar line to a terminal at Lower Fort Mason. This extension would run from the vicinity of the existing terminal near Fisherman's Wharf, westward alongside the San Francisco Maritime Museum and Aquatic Park, and then through the existing, now unused, San Francisco Belt Railroad tunnel under Upper Fort Mason.
A technical feasibility study, under the aegis of the National Park Service and San Francisco Municipal Railway, was completed in December 2004. An Environmental Impact Statement for the extension, involving the San Francisco Municipal Railway, National Park Service and Federal Transit Administration, commenced in May 2006.[26] The Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) was completed in March 2011, and was scheduled to be reviewed by December 2011.