In this high-flying, birds-eye-view of the Mare Island Shoreline Heritage Preserve, Brian Collett, a landscape architect, planner and our park naturalist, who serves on the Board of Directors of the Mare Island Heritage Trust, captures the compact complexity of the Preserve’s historic and natural resources melded together in this unique and remarkable place. From this vantage-point you really can see where the Preserve’s rather lengthy name is derived from. click here for a full view of Brian’s sketch. click here for another  of Brian’s sketches looking southwest.

Surrounded by the waters of San Pablo Bay on the west, the Carquinez Strait on the south and forming the western mouth and shore of the Napa River/Mare Island Strait with piers jutting far out into the two Straits, you can see just how “Shoreline” became part of the name.

The Preserve is situated on the former Mare Island Naval Ammunition Depot the Navy’s oldest  arsenal in the Pacific founded in 1857 with its oldest cemetery founded in 1858 nestled above the historic Ordnance Worker’s housing dating back to 1860 through the early 1900’s. These 3 features together make up the Mare Island Naval Ammunition Depot Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places and contributors to the Mare Island National Historic Landmark, the highest ranking National Park Service gives an historic site in America.  Many other historic sites dot the landscape from an early Bay Model built and operated by the Army Corps of Engineers in the late 1920’s to the Bob and Alma Rowser Historic Gardens, a Victory Garden orchard and a reservoir dating back to the 1860’s that supplied water for the fire-suppression system of the arsenal.

The 284 ft. hill with its geological marker dated 1852, an active Coast Guard communications tower, and an art tribute that honors former shipyard workers, provides scenic vistas of 7 counties. The Preserve is dotted with bunkers and magazines used for storage of munitions. Abandoned light poles on Piers 34 and 35 used for loading munitions onto Navy vessels, have been appropriated by osprey and great blue herons for nesting. Steep ravines and shear bluffs are blanketed with live oak and coastal sage and dozens of other rare and unique native plant communities. Grazed by tule elk and later Spanish horses, particularly mares and foals in the springtime, and later sheep, a dairy herd and cattle, natives grasses still have an amazing presence on the extensive grasslands.

A privately owned 18-hole golf course is adjacent to the Preserve on former Ammunition Depot land combined with the original 9 holes of the oldest golf course on a military base west of the Mississippi, founded in 1892.

Ninety-eight acres of the planned 215 acres of the Preserve are currently open for hiking, biking, picnicking and visits to the cemetery and our Visitors Center on the 2nd Saturday of every month and by appointment. Guided hikes onto the Historic Southshore and piers are scheduled on 2nd Saturdays. As volunteers join us and funds are raised, this special place will be open more frequently. It’s all a quite magic place and we welcome you to experience and explore the Preserve for yourself. We are sure you will want to take an active role in its preservation, restoration and operation and interpretation.