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 and subsequently as a military port facility. During World War II, it was the principal port for the Pacific campaign.

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, to serve the Pacific, It was modeled on the New York Port of Embarkation, which supplied U.S. Army forces in World War I. 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.

Text adapted from “Fort Mason” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Fort Mason ranks #1,666 of 5,479 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #41 of the 77 mapped in United States. See how United States compares in the castle statistics.

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